


Code Name: Firefly

by Alienissimus



Category: G.I. Joe - All Media Types
Genre: Baroness - Freeform, Cobra - Freeform, Destro - Freeform, Fanfic, GI Joe - Freeform, Gen, fan fiction, firefly - Freeform, origin, quarrel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-25 18:27:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3820420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alienissimus/pseuds/Alienissimus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a boy growing up in Northern Ireland, Lorcan Farris endured more than his father’s temper, he survived his father’s bombs. When supposed friends betray his father, Lorcan is left to face chaos alone. But a Scottish arms dealer takes him in, provides a stable home, a role model, and an advanced education in terrorism. With his skills sharpened and focus clear, Lorcan steps beyond his past into a world within his control, one he commands under the Code Name: Firefly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Code Name: Firefly

_Disclaimer: This is a piece of fan fiction using characters from the G.I. Joe universe which is owned by the Hasbro company. It is intended for entertainment outside the official canon and I, in no way, expect to profit financially from the characters or images associated with this story. I am a fan of GI Joe and I’m grateful for opportunity to express my ultimate devotion in the form of this series of stories._

 

Code Name: Firefly

 

            A cheeky situation comedy delivered the punch line. Canned laughter roared to a flat joke. Lorcan Farris didn’t crack a smile, yet still watched, waited for another joke to warm the cold silence between him and his father. The television’s mechanical colors flickered dull reds, greens and blues into their small, dark living room. At the other end of the paisley sofa, half drunk and sullen, his father’s motionless expression flashed wickedness and rage in the fluttering light.

            Heavy boots marched up the porch steps.

            Lorcan’s attention snapped to the front door.

            A knock, powerful, impatient, made both Lorcan and his father jump in their seats.

            Another stiff rap rattled the doorknob, drown the sit-com’s laugh track.

            His father, Pearce, pulled his thirty-eight caliber revolver, peeked between the drapes and shooed Lorcan out of the living room with a wave of his hand.

            Seven thirty-two p.m., Wednesday evening Mass had concluded a half hour earlier. Lorcan expected his mother home, but that wasn’t her at the door. He rushed toward his bedroom across the hall from the living room, yet stutter-stepped near the door to stay by his father’s side. Another hand wave. Lorcan obeyed, left his bedroom door cracked open, his ear to the gap. Ten, almost eleven years old, brushed into the bedroom for his safety like a child, Lorcan listened, eager to rush out and fight the intruder like a man, to make his father proud.

            Pearce unlocked the deadbolt, opened the front door. The same heavy boots entered the apartment.

            A sniffle sounded. The person said in stubborn Gaelic, “I’m so sorry, Pearce. There was nothin’ I could do.”

            The voice rang with a familiar timbre. Brian—Pearce’s brother in arms. Lorcan peeked around the corner, saw the despair, the sorrow on Brian’s rough, battle-hardened face as he handed a rosary to Pearce. He saw his father’s expression hang with uncontrollable sorrow.

            “The Ulster bastards were waitin’ for us down on Shankill. They opened up as we came round the corner. They didn’t care who they got. I’m so sorry, Pearce, but Siobhan…. They got her. I’m sorry brother, but they shot Siobhan dead.”

            The television laughed into the desolate living room.

            Lorcan stood straight in the doorway, stared as Brian hugged his father. A sniffle hit his nose, tears spilled, but Lorcan didn’t cry, he didn’t break down and bawl at his mother’s death.

            Belfast, Ireland, June 30th, 1980. Lorcan had been surrounded by death and destruction his entire life, survived the worst of the Troubles, heard the same conversation a dozen times over. Always the Ulster bastards, always someone from the Cause close to his father and Brian, but never as dear as his mother.

            “We’ll get the bastards,” Brian said, a hitch in his voice. “We’ll get every last one of ‘em. I have faith in you, Pearce. Deliver us another Easter Rising.”

            Brain stepped back, nodded to Lorcan over Pearce’s shoulder and departed.

            Pearce closed and locked the front door. Lorcan inched from his bedroom, studied his father for wants or needs. Familial comfort, or distance. The gun shook in Pearce’s hand. Always quick to strike with little provocation, Lorcan waited for a sign, one that said to come closer and commiserate, or run and hide until Pearce went to the pub.

            Lorcan’s father faced him. Red, green and blue flickers from the television colored his right profile while the left side remained hidden in wicked shadows. Tears glistened, his snarl trembled. Lorcan froze beneath his father’s terrible stare.

            In a low, raspy tone, his father said, “Stay here, boy. I’ve got work to do.”

            The show ended on another laugh. Artificial applause followed.

            Lorcan shuddered. He took his mother’s side and hated his father’s work. He hated his father for making bombs.

*2*

            Lorcan sat proper on the paisley sofa in his Sunday’s best and watched his father pace across the living room. A dense cloud hugged the ceiling, accumulating with each nervous cigarette that burned. Lorcan had never seen his father smoke so many in a row. His mother would usually say something, not much, but a gentle reminder to take it outside, depending on his mood. But a little extra smoke wasn’t something to get hit over, so she never pressed too hard.

            A knock at the door. Slow and deliberate.

            “That’s James,” Pearce said to Lorcan. “Mind your manners and stay quiet.” He stubbed out his cigarette in an overfilled ashtray and answered the door. A big smile erased all signs of nervousness from the moment before.

            “James, so good to see you. Come inside.”

            James McCullen entered the Farris apartment like a tree with legs. More than eight inches taller and twice Lorcan’s father’s weight, he dominated the instant he stepped through. His sharp blue eyes soaked up every detail in one sweep of the room.

            Mr. McCullen said in a thick Scottish brogue, “I trust you’ve received your shipment?”

            “Aye, can I interest you in a spot of genuine Irish Whiskey?”

            Mr. McCullen shook no. “I’ve heard of your loss, Pearce. You and your son have my deepest condolences.”

            Lorcan sat as he was told, quietly. He noticed his father’s jaw set as Mr. McCullen expressed his regret. Though small, Lorcan spotted his father’s fingers twitch against his leg. Nervousness, indignation, the offer of whiskey was more than a polite gesture. Pearce needed the drink and Mr. McCullen denied him a respectable opportunity to calm his anxiety. A shiver prickled the hairs on Lorcan’s neck, but he wasn’t afraid of Mr. McCullen. Pearce’s twitches would multiply until Mr. McCullen departed. Alone, angry, his father would then hit the bottle and probably Lorcan, too.

            “Yes. That brings me to my next point,” Pearce said. He shifted on his feet. Lorcan looked way up into the cigarette haze and noticed Mr. McCullen’s demeanor stiffen.

            “I’d like to ask, if I could, for double the shipment of plastique.”

            “That can be arranged.”

            “But I’m afraid I haven’t got the money.”

            “Tithes are down at Church, then?” Mr. McCullen asked. “Aren’t your Provisionals taxing the faithful?”

            Pearce forced a chuckle. “Aye, but what I’m askin’ for is extra.”

            He kept his head low, avoided Mr. McCullen’s eye line, stammered over his words. Lorcan felt the tension thickened in the stale cigarette smoke. An aura surrounded Mr. McCullen, an air of influence and power that cautioned people like his father to understand their station. But Mr. McCullen and his father had known each other for decades. A favor between friends shouldn’t have been uncomfortable.

            “Pearce, you know I don’t extend credit. Not without substantial collateral.”

            “But Mr. McCullen, James, this is for Siobhan, for my boy. What I’ve got is allocated. But I need something more, something to get at the Ulster Defense Association. I know where they’re safe house is. I can get them all at once if you’d extend to me an extra shipment.”

            Lorcan listened to the desperation in his father’s voice. He heard the passion, the longing for Siobhan. He also understood for the first time that his father had a direct hand in people’s deaths. Lorcan had enjoyed his father’s festivities with Brian and friends after successful operations, yet never grasped that Pearce orchestrated bombings. That he killed people.

            Shame flashed though his soul. His father took away loved ones, made others feel loss, sorrow, revenge. But Pearce talked about the people who killed Lorcan’s mother, the people that stole the kindest, loveliest person from his life. For the murder of someone so gentle, the Ulster bastards deserved nothing short of death.

            “That is not how I—”

            “James, please. I’m beggin’ you.”

            Lorcan stared at Mr. McCullen. The man, so big and authoritative, appeared as the gateway to a basic desire. Pearce had nothing, no money, no credit, just a sad story to sell, yet his anger, his hope and redemption rested with Mr. McCullen’s charity.

            Mr. McCullen stared at Lorcan for a long moment. “Okay, but I have paying customers ahead of you. I’ll be several months. Start saving your pennies now, because I’m also charging thirty-five percent interest.”

            “Thank you, James.” Pearce leaned in to shake Mr. McCullen’s hand with an appreciative grin, but Mr. McCullen angled away. “I’ll have your money, I promise.”

            “That’s what everybody says. But understand, Pearce, this is business. Are you hearing me clearly?”

            “Aye, James. Aye.”

            Mr. McCullen opened the front door, turned back to Lorcan. “Happy birthday, lad,” he said and exited the apartment.

            Pearce gazed at Lorcan, smiled wide as the door clicked shut. “That’s right, July thirteenth. Eleven years old and nearly a man. Let’s celebrate.” Lorcan’s father pulled out the bottle of whiskey, took a swig and hopped around the room, hand on his hip, feet cutting a jig.

            It wasn’t the birthday his mother promised two weeks earlier, but Lorcan’s father got what he wanted, and probably wouldn’t hit him.

            _Good enough._

*3*

            Lorcan woke to a muffled argument. Two men, his father and Brian, their voices raised, going back and forth. He crept from bed, tiptoed over squeaky floorboards, twisted his bedroom door handle so slowly each metallic scrape was lost to time and his boisterous father.

            A slice of light cut between the door and its sill from a bare light bulb in the hallway. The razor thin opening let harsh sounds form sharp words.

            “No, we stick with our plan,” Brian said.

            His Gaelic slurred in whiskey, Pearce said, “The plan won’t win back our land! We need to exterminate these Protestant bastards.”

            Lorcan shuddered at the sound. His father, drunk and angry, would find a smaller outlet for his temper the moment Brian left.

            “We can’t go blowin’ up women and children, Pearce, even if they are the Devil’s spawn.”

            “I’m not sure you’re understandin’ me. I’m the bloody Firefly Bomber! Ye’ ain’t got shite without me!”

            “Pearce, listen to me good. Don’t expose yourself. I know you want to get back at the Ulster bastards, but don’t go out on your own.”

            “You don’t tell me what to do,” Pearce said. Lorcan heard whiskey splash in the bottle as his father took another swig.

            “Pearce, you’re a valuable asset to us. So valuable anyone of us will get popped to protect you. You’re our brother and we’ll die for you, but I’m sayin’ just wait on it. We’ll get ‘em. You just—”

            “I don’t have to do shite! You don’t know what it’s like. Every night I have to…. I have to…. And that miserable kid!”

            Lorcan bit his lip. He couldn’t let his father hear him sob. Questions with no answers, baseless accusations, arbitrary signs of weakness, anything Pearce found contemptible he tried to correct with the back of his hand. Lorcan would stammer for answers, admit whatever he was accused of, wore a grim, expressionless face to limit his father’s excuses, though he never begged. He learned early that begging for mercy gave away the fragments of his self worth and the beatings got worse. The family bond compelled unconditional love, but constant confusion and defensiveness forced Lorcan to hate his father, too.

            “Pearce, what are you sayin’? You’re lucky to have Lorcan. He’s a good boy and he’ll be a strong warrior one day.”

            “He doesn’t know shite. He’s like his mother. Always snivelin’ over….”

            Lorcan heard a hefty body fall into the sofa.

            “Blast it! I spilled my…. I spilled….”

            “That’s it. Just sleep it off, you drunk bastard,” Brian said.

            Lorcan stood at the door a moment longer. Tears puddle, a hint of blood seeped as his teeth dug into his lower lip. A snore rattled loose. His father had passed out.

            Brian left the apartment. The television prattled beneath Pearce’s labored snoring. Lorcan opened his bedroom door a little further, scanned the hallway, listened to his father’s sleepy rhythm. One foot into the hallway, then the other. His toes touched the floor, muffled the squeaky boards as Lorcan moved slowly, silently, though his father wouldn’t have heard a noise even if he was sober.

            Blackness enthralled Lorcan like a shadowy blanket as he snuck into the kitchen. He embraced the dark as an ally, sensed the chair’s metal tube leg pulled away from the dinette, the corner of the freezer box, the edge of the counter. Lorcan dipped his fingers into dingy, cold sink water, grasped the handle and drew the carving knife from between grimy dishes and a rusty pot. Tiptoe-silent again, he crept toward the living room, greasy water dripping from the knife tip.

            Images of starving Africans and calls for donations to Oxfam issued from the television.

            Into the lighted room. Pearce’s head laid over the back of the sofa, his body slumped. Lorcan stood over his drunken father, raised the knife to the man’s throat. An easy, open target. He stood, starred at his father, at the rise and fall of his chest. _Mom never sniveled,_ he thought. _She took every beating and still loved you!_

            Pleas for charity echoed over Lorcan’s shoulder.

            But Pearce didn’t kill Siobhan, the Ulster bastards did. Lorcan’s father wanted to blow them up, avenge his mother. And all the others. Brian spoke of loyalty, of brotherhood, said how important Pearce was, how others would put their lives down to protect him. _Can I take him from the Cause?_

The television begged him to find mercy in his heart.

            Lorcan’s cold, wet hand trembled. His strength wavered. _I have to trust him._

            He shut off the television, slunk into the kitchen, dropped the knife in the dirty dishes and shuffled off to bed, motherless, hated by his father, disappointed in himself.

*4*

            The bedroom light flicked on. Lorcan opened his sleepy eyes, glanced at the window to estimate the time. Dark blue. Very early morning.

            “Come on, boy. We’ve got work to do,” Lorcan’s father said from the doorway, head hung slack, hand on the sill for balance. He hadn’t slept off enough whiskey.

            An uncertain fear moved Lorcan faster than his tired body wanted. His father didn’t yell, didn’t shout contradictory or confusing orders as a pretext to discipline, though he held the unsteady gaze of a man looking to take back his pride.

            “What’s the hold up?!”

            Lorcan jumped into his pants from the day before, buttoned up his shirt. Pearce stumbled backward, lurched down the hall toward his bedroom.

            Pearce said, his words still slurred, “We’re gettin’ back at those Ulster bastards, boy. Time you learn the family business.”

            Lorcan followed close behind his father prepared to catch him if he fell. In the far corner of his bedroom, Peace pulled back the rug and unlocked a trap door in the wooden floor. A step ladder sank into the dark cave below.

            “Go on, get in, already,” Pearce said.

            Lorcan hesitated. Cold, stale air chilled his face. He detected a chemical odor, like household cleaning products.

            “What are you waitin’ for?”

            Pearce kicked Lorcan in the butt, knocked him into the hole. Lorcan grasped the floor’s edge. He whipped sideways and crashed on his ribs against a cold cement floor. The force knocked his breath away.

            “Bloody hell! You better not be wreckin’ up my workshop, boy.”

            Lorcan stood, bared down against the pain in his side, tried to inhale silently. He had a few more seconds as his father descended the steps. Another agonizing breath. Fire tore up his flank as his lungs expanded for air.

            “Why didn’t you turn on the light?”

            _Because I’ve never been down here!_ Lorcan screamed in his head, but he couldn’t say so without infuriating his father.

            “Where is the damned string….”

            One more second. Lorcan exhaled, drew a toxic breath, calmed painful expressions from his face.

            A ball chain zipped and retracted, the light blinked on. Pearce didn’t look, didn’t ask if Lorcan might be hurt.

            _I could’ve killed you last night._

            Lorcan examined the hidden cellar from end to end in one quick glance. He couldn’t linger on anything outside his father’s inebriated focus without antagonizing Pearce. A half dozen large crates, a work bench along the back wall, a wooden shelf beside that. Rolls of rope, soldering equipment, tape, empty boxes. Tools spread across the work bench, snips of wire in a rainbow of colors lay scattered around a barstool. This was his father’s workshop. What Brian thought important enough to die for.

            Pearce sat on the barstool, rummaged through his tools. Lorcan took a moment to examine the cellar closer. Cinderblocks all around proportioned the same length and width as his apartment, though without dividing walls—the foundation of the building. The ceiling stood too low, yet enough earth had been dug out and cemented to open up workable space.

            “Hand me a det-cap,” Pearce said as he held a jumbled ball of wires attached to a foot-long metal pipe.

            Lorcan paused. He didn’t know what a det-cap looked like.

            “They’re right over there. In that box. If you don’t know, just ask, for Christ’s sake.”

            He stepped two paces to the box caught between an expectation of violence and a moment of civility. Questions more often than not brought harsh rebukes. He’d learned to nod and search for context rather than admit ignorance and suffer. Lorcan pulled a small cylindrical metal apparatus with a half dozen electrode posts sticking out of both ends from the box.

            Pearce took the det-cap, swayed on the barstool, steadied himself on Lorcan’s shoulder. “This, my boy, is the heart of any good bomb, but it’s only as good as its wirin’.”

            The bundle of wires, the capped-off pipe, its complexity escaped Lorcan, though he found an appreciation in its functionality. “Is that what we’re going to get those Ulster bastards with?” he asked.

            “No, this one is too small for that job. It’s an anti-personnel device. It’ll take care of a few bastards, but it’s mostly for attention. I’ve got to finish a score by next week. Hand me the solderin’ iron, would you.”

            Lorcan obeyed. He watched his father’s wobbly hands manipulate the pipe, jab wires through drill holes, take a red-hot soldering iron and drip molten tin alloy onto an explosives packed tube. Pearce showed Lorcan every step, explained his work, said why the process was necessary and how to foil countermeasures. He described the ways people had tried to defeat his devices and what he’d done to ensure victory.

            For the first time Lorcan saw a passion in his father’s bleary eyes. He saw a man motivated to horrible deeds by an unjust system. In those little moments, as Pearce taught with patience and a gentle tone, Lorcan’s hate ebbed to love. Minute over minute as wires and det-caps soldered together, as components became devices, Lorcan forgave the beatings. Forgave his father’s abuse of a woman and child. Forgave his father for building bombs.

            “Pay attention,” Pearce said and patted Lorcan’s forearm with the hot soldering iron.

            Lorcan jumped back, flexed the burned arm, held down his scream.

            “This is a matter of life and death. Don’t go daydreamin’ about girls when you’re makin’ these things, otherwise that teensy burn will be the last thing you feel.”

            The blister puffed a little. He listened to his father’s warning and stifled the pain.

            Pearce lifted a pail of rusted nuts and bolts and ball bearings. He scooped a few handfuls onto a sheet of butcher paper, wrapped it around the pipe bomb with an even layer of debris. “This is what makes it anti-personnel,” he said with a smirk and a wink. “The rust will add to the injuries, keep those Ulster bastards in hospital a while longer. We tape it all together, place the timer so it’s easy to set in the field.”

            Lorcan heard the details only a master would’ve considered, though the burn still smoldered beneath the skin.

            Pearce swaddled the device in newspaper “Can’t have it bumpin’ around too much.”

            _No argument there._

            Packaged it in a tattered delivery box. “Got to look like it’s been through the post.”

            _Limit suspicion._

            Sat it on a wooden shelf beside the workbench. “Best to keep it from static electricity.”

            _The unforeseen dangers._

            “You’re goin’ to help me put the rest together,” Pearce said and shuffled around the cellar gathering parts.

            Lorcan had believed that one day he’d join the Cause. He also believed that his father would love him. Buried beneath the apartment, in a pit of destruction, the two beliefs converged. He learned from the most respected man in the Provisional Irish Republican Army, he learned the family trade and became significant to his father. A tear moistened his eye though not from bruised ribs or the burn. Lorcan wiped it away and snarled back at weakness before his father could notice.

*5*

            Lorcan organized the score of devices he and his father had built, swept the shop and climbed out of the cellar. Brian’s voice met him in the back bedroom as he closed the trap door. Brian had arrived on time, 1:30 a.m., to pick up a special package.

            “Pearce, we don’t need any more,” Brian said, a bit more anger in his tone than Lorcan expected. “Please, stick to the plan. We’re not goin’ to level Belfast.”

            “Listen here, Brian. I want to hurt ‘em. I got enough built to let ‘em know we’re serious. And I’ve got another shipment comin’ soon. When that arrives we’re goin’ to liberate Northern Ireland over night.”

            “How did you get another shipment? We haven’t funded anythin’ else.”

            “You didn’t need to. I made arrangements with Mr. McCullen, but I do need money so pull your funds together and get it to me this month.”

            “Shite, Pearce! I won’t have that kind of money for half a year! We just paid McCullen for the ship load of weapons from Libya.”

            “So what?! You’re still goin’ to need my bombs.”

            “Not all at once. Pearce, I’ll let you know when I need more, but don’t go buildin’ all those extras for nothin’.”

            “They’re not for nothin’! They’re for winnin’ this war!”

            “I’ll be back when I’m ready. Don’t do anythin’ before then.” Brian took his package, left the apartment.

            Pearce grabbed a bottle of whiskey and slumped into the paisley sofa. Lorcan saw the defeat in his father’s long swigs.

            “We’ll show them,” he said to his father. “Brian doesn’t know what he’s talkin’ about.”

            Pearce smiled at his son, closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

*6*

            _Indiscriminant,_ Lorcan repeated to himself what the evening news anchorman called the attack. _Indiscriminant destruction by the Firefly Bomber._

            In the cold glare, beamed across their dark apartment, Lorcan saw his father’s jaw flex, heard teeth grind. The anchorman announced that a special unit, sent from Scotland Yard, had arrived to track down the cowardly Firefly Bomber and predicted the terrorist would go into hiding. Pearce turned to Lorcan, fixed his gaze on the eleven year old boy. Lorcan quaked, though his father didn’t appear ready to beat him. Signs of insult, of injured pride, showed in his snarled lip, but Pearce’s stare held more, it revealed defiance and determination.

            Lorcan followed his father into the cellar, to the wooden shelf with finished devices. “We’ve got another job to do, boy,” Pearce said. He stuffed four bombs into a duffle bag. “Joshy’s boys won’t be settin’ these things tonight.”

            For the last four weeks as the gun powder and plastique explosives ran out, Pearce resorted to improvised devices, oil and fertilizer, pressure cookers, compressed gas, anything to continue the campaign. But Brian wouldn’t touch the new creations. He only wanted quality devices, said the Cause needed to support an appearance of professionalism, that homemade bombs looked desperate. Lorcan agreed, but never mentioned it to his father.

            Then Pearce’s new friend, Joshy, started showing up.

            Always drunk, Joshy and his boys would take whatever improvised devices they could, damage pointless targets, random cars, junk yard fences, newspaper stands, then pretend to be IRA freedom fighters. They’d walk around pubs boasting of their exploits, though only to intimidate, beat and rob innocent people. They attracted too much notoriety, attention real freedom fighters, like Brian, never wanted and recognition that would get Lorcan and his father arrested.

            “But we’ve never planted devices ourselves,” Lorcan said.

            “Don’t cross me, boy. I’ve been at this game a lot longer than you.” Pearce hoisted a full duffle, hiked up the ladder. Trap door locked and hidden, Pearce tossed Lorcan a gray balaclava as they disappeared into the Belfast night.

*7*

            Lorcan pressed against a cold brick wall behind a rubbish heap, out of breath, yet too frightened to breathe. Two policemen meandered down the street on their midnight patrol. They missed the half exposed duffle bag loaded with explosives on the sidewalk just a yard away.

            Pearce slapped Lorcan’s head and crept out of the alley. “Keep a closer look, boy.”

            Lorcan’s heart raced. They’d almost gotten caught. But a glint in his father’s eye suggested Pearce was having fun, like impressions of youth fluttered over reality. _This is getting dangerous._

            Pearce snatched the duffle, pulled out a pressure cooker bomb and set it in front of the Protestant owned grocery. The place Lorcan’s mother used to buy produce.

            They walked away, traveled the damp, chilly street behind the two policemen close enough to be spotted if the officers doubled back.

            Pearce whispered, “Don’t worry, boy. We’re in their blind spot.” Lorcan heard the smile in his father’s voice. “This is my favorite place. The officers trust what they’ve just patrolled.”

            A tea shop, a police station and…. Pearce planted his last bomb, a concoction of household cleaners, at the front door of their Catholic Church. Lorcan’s father hardly practiced and didn’t force him into Wednesday services, but his mother was faithful. Siobhan attended every Sunday and Wednesday until she died leaving the very Church. Lorcan’s mother’s devotion bolstered his, though he appreciated the days he got to skip services.

            “This isn’t right,” Lorcan told his father as they hiked the long way home avoiding Shankill Road. He swore an apology to his mother’s memory as he recited fragments of prayers.

            “Unfortunate casualty of war, boy.” They dashed into an alley, cut between textile warehouses. Dew condensed on smooth surfaces. Automobile silhouettes softened beneath the moisture, windows hazed over, cement and bushes twinkled in dawn’s nascent glow. “But it’ll make our people feel like victims, build support for our Cause.”

            Pearce and Lorcan slipped inside their apartment and into bed by 4:45 a.m. But Lorcan couldn’t sleep. The night’s events played behind his heavy eyelids. _We almost got caught,_ he thought. _And we’re blowing up our Church. And the grocery. He’s destroying the neighborhood. This isn’t right. I’ve got to get control._

*8*

            A hard, impatient knock rattled the front door. Lorcan heard it from the kitchen, jumped at its first issue. The evening, the energy behind the sound, for a moment Lorcan returned to the night his mother had died. He closed a cheese sandwich. His dinner. Television images strobed through his head. Chaos and destruction. Wounded people, bleeding and crying, scared, reaching out for loved ones. Protestants and Catholics alike. Pearce claimed victory, insisted Brian didn’t see the wisdom in the attacks, though he only sewed confusion and fear. But Lorcan agreed with Brian.

            The door resounded with another knock. Pearce grumbled as he stood to answer, torn away from the news broadcasts that showed his handiwork. Lorcan slunk through the hall, padded over squeaky boards in time with the deadbolt’s click and the doorknob’s scrape. He sat at the edge of his bed tuned to the conversation in the living room.

            Lorcan bit into his dinner, chewed slowly. Other people’s mothers and children, sorrow and suffering, their faces, red and teary, resembled his when Brian said his mother had been killed. But those people weren’t the Ulster bastards that shot his mother in cold blood, they were unlucky, unaware.

            Someone entered, the front door closed. Lorcan stopped chewing, his stomach too knotted to swallow.

            Brian said in a low, scornful tone, “What the bloody hell do you think you’re doin’? Innocent women and children at a grocery? I’ve got orders to cut our ties, Pearce. What you did last night goes beyond any common sense. Eight different people told me they saw you and Lorcan wanderin’ the streets. They said the cops almost nabbed you. That they must’ve been rookies, or drunk. They don’t know how you didn’t get spotted.”

            “I didn’t get spotted because I’m good.”

            “You got lucky! That’s all! My people watched you the entire time. If it had been Ulster men they would’ve shot you and your son dead!”

            Lorcan chewed the soggy bite of bread and cheese once more. He escaped the police officers by chance. What his father called skill was dumb luck. A fresh tremble shook. Somehow people watched and discussed with others his father’s best efforts as if they’d seen children sneaking cookies from a cookie jar.

            “Piss off, Brian. I don’t need you anymore,” Pearce said. “I’ve got a new crew.”

            “Joshy and his boys? They’re thugs and you know it. That’s why you and Lorcan went out last night. Because they were too drunk. They don’t care about liberatin’ Ireland, all they care about is drinkin’ and football and bashin’ anyone smaller. Think this over, Pearce. You better pick the right side and straighten up because after last night, you’re on your own. And if you hit another Church, I’ll shoot you myself.”

            Lorcan heard the front door open and close. Brian had left. In one motion, Lorcan jumped off his bed, doused the light and leapt back, sliding beneath the covers. Heavy footsteps approached. He gulped down a bite of cheese sandwich, squeezed his eyes closed.

            His bedroom door slammed open. “Get out of bed, boy.”

            Lorcan rolled over, opened his eyes slowly as though he’d been asleep.

            Pearce threw back the blanket, yanked Lorcan out of bed by a lanky wrist.

            “Is that a sandwich? What the hell are you doin’ in bed with a sandwich?”

            Lorcan froze. Neither the truth nor a lie would work.

            “I told you, no bringin’ food into your room.” Pearce smacked the back of Lorcan’s head and pushed him out the door. “We’ve got more work to do.”

*9*

            Sleep deprived and hungry, yet too scared to feel the pangs, Lorcan soldered wires with nervous, shaky hands while his father drank whiskey and blended cleaning agents in a bucket. The fumes filled the cellar corner to corner, contaminated every breath Lorcan’s young lungs inhaled.

            “Is Brian picking up this batch?” Lorcan asked. He’d heard Brian say they were on their own, but forced the question, any question, to stay awake a minute longer.

            “No. We don’t need Brian anymore.”

            “We’re going out again?”

            “These are for Joshy.”

            “Are you sure you trust Joshy?” Lorcan shuddered the moment his words flew, but exhaustion and chemicals broke down his caution.

            “You heard, didn’t you?” Pearce stood from his bucket. “You heard the entire conversation, but pretended to be asleep. That explains the sandwich. Well, what do you think? Do you trust Joshy, or do you want to go out on your own?”

            “No, I was just—”

            Pearce slapped Lorcan across the face. Lorcan stumbled sideways, stood, but his father was already over him.

            “You just what.”

            “I was—”

            Another slap. Blood trickled from Lorcan’s mouth. He held a hand in submission, but his father batted it away. Pearce stepped in with a heavy right fist to Lorcan’s stomach. Lorcan coughed the volume of his chest, doubled over and collapsed to his knees.

            “Now you’re beggin’ for mercy? Have some pride, boy. You’re a Farris. We die before we beg.”

            Lorcan gasped for air, caught a glimpse of a fist, than everything went black.

*10*

            Lorcan finished the last device. He’d spent thirty-seven hours straight constructing bombs from the moment Mr. McCullen’s people delivered his father’s special order. Fifteen small pipe bombs Joshy’s drunken lot could handle and one monster made with enough plastique explosive to level a city block. That was the bomb Pearce had wanted for ten long months, the bomb built to avenge Siobhan.

            Exhausted, Lorcan climbed out of the cellar, switched on a sitcom and slumped into the paisley sofa to rest his young bones. Someone was at the front door, but he didn’t move. Pearce walked through the living room and grumbled, “Aren’t you gonna get that?”

            Joshy entered the apartment, held up a bottle of whiskey. He and Pearce exchanged boisterous hugs like old pals. They congratulated each other as if they’d accomplished anything worthwhile, vowed to send all the Protestants to apostate Hell and basked in the visions of Northern Ireland free from British rule.

            Lorcan watched television.

            “Well, it’s finally time,” Pearce said.

            “Here’s to April nineteenth, 1981. And once again, a Pearce will deliver us our Easter Rising,” Joshy said and toasted to historical providence.

            Laugh tracks cackled in the background, mocked his father’s aspirations. Not even a thousand bombs would win the war. Too much of Pearce’s misguided emotions threatened to wreck the Provisional IRA, imprison him, kill innocent people.

            Pearce and Joshy drank, grabbed a duffle bag from the kitchen and left the apartment together on a grand drunken adventure.

            The show ended and commercial followed. Lorcan watched a smiling insurance salesman shake hands with a happy family and for a moment he hated the family.

            Another knock at his door. Lorcan froze. He listened for a second. _Joshy?_

            A quick peek through the curtains. Mr. McCullen stood in the chilly night. Lorcan opened the door, invited him in with a hasty wave.

            “You’ve grown,” Mr. McCullen said. “Is your father available?”

            In a high shaky voice, Lorcan said, “No, sir.” Mr. McCullen had arrived for money, yet Pearce left Lorcan to handle his business. “We’ve received your shipment, but he’s currently out liberating Northern Ireland, sir.”

            “I see. Eager for the Cause. Would you mind if I stayed awhile?”

            “No, sir.” Lorcan’s father’s voice threatened, from memory, a beating unless he turned the guest away. But Mr. McCullen’s noble air, their long family friendship and the tremendous debt obliged Lorcan to accommodate.

            “Would you like something to drink?” Lorcan offered, but Mr. McCullen made no reply. He listened to a miniscule device behind his wool pea coat’s broad lapel.

            The telephone rang. Mr. McCullen leveled a heavy stare at Lorcan as though he knew who called.

            Lorcan answered, “Hello?”

            “Lorcan, this is Brian. You’ve got to get out of there. SAS troops nabbed Joshy and his boys and they ratted out Pearce. They arrested your father and’re headed to your apartment now!”

            “Joshy ratted him out?” Lorcan asked. His hand trembled, tears rimmed his eyelids.

            “Aye, get out of there now! Run down Plymouth toward—”

            Mr. McCullen jammed the receiver button. “You can come with me.”

            Lorcan looked up at Mr. McCullen’s stern countenance, saw trust in his ice-blue eyes.

            “Decide quickly, lad,” Mr. McCullen said and exited the front door.

            Belfast, the IRA, Brian, all he’d been raised to know. Life on the run, Ulster hit squads, Protestant orphanages, all that he faced hung on one hasty decision. And his father, Lorcan had a duty to stand by his blood.

            _Leave him,_ his mother’s angelic voice said as if sung into his ear. _He’s never been good to you._

Lorcan’s past and future collapsed into one moment. He glanced around his home for an excuse, a reason to stay, but nothing offered him hope.

            Mr. McCullen’s footsteps faded down the porch. British SAS troops closed in. Lorcan’s heart palpitated. Freedom. He leapt across the living room, snatched his mother’s rosary off the television. A chorus of canned laughter followed him as he ran out the door to Mr. McCullen’s side.

*11*

            Lorcan sprawled across a burgundy velour sofa in a den larger than his entire Belfast apartment. Paintings of long dead heirs to Castle Destro adorned the walls, antique rugs warmed the granite floor, four suits of armor, one in each corner, guarded ancient honor. Crossed swords against a shield bearing the Destro family crest commanded the room from above the one hundred and seventy inch television screen set flat against the wall. Not the majestic décor, not the table games, or the grand view overlooking the Scottish Highlands of Callander County, but an evening news broadcast from Ireland captured his attention.

            Mr. McCullen’s television received every broadcast in the world. Thousands of stations in hundreds of languages, though Lorcan tuned to Irish news. Every night for the last two weeks he’d catch a glimpse of his father as the prosecution’s case against the notorious Firefly Bomber progressed.

            Resettled in Laird James McCullen Destro XXIV’s three hundred and fifty year old castle, the evening news became Lorcan’s only comfort. He couldn’t hide his accent at school, his dark hair and eyes stood out against predominantly lighter tones and children laughed when he forgot his new last name—Flannigan. Nobody around Callander paid enough attention to foreign affairs to connect his last name to the Firefly Bomber’s, but Mr. McCullen insisted he be known as Lorcan Flannigan in public.

            Uncomfortable in luxury, outcast at school, his only solace came with watching his father’s trial. But a tiny thought in the back of Lorcan’s mind, buried beneath school work, haunted him relentlessly. The trial couldn’t last. Everyday Lorcan rushed his studies to watch his father, to witness something familiar, to draw a connection from another human being, yet Pearce inched closer to a life sentence, cut off forever in a maximum security prison.

            The news program concluded. A guilty verdict had already been reached by the anchorman, though the jury would give Lorcan a few more days of familiarity. A cheery jingle introduced another show. Lorcan changed the channel.

            The den’s door opened. Lorcan ignored whoever entered, stretched across the velour sofa and switched to an American station.

            “Master Flannigan,” the housemaid, Clair, said. “Master McCullen wishes your company in the study.”

            Lorcan sat up, gazed at the young lady over the back of the sofa. Fourteen, thin frame, hair and eyes the color of his with skin as pale as an Irish fog. The daughter of the head housemaid, Clair stood out. Pretty, refined, dignified in her duties, a servant, yet worlds beyond Lorcan’s humble background.

            He crept off the velour sofa, followed Clair through the antechamber, his eyes pinned to her creamy white calves exposed below her black work skirt. She led him to the study, opened the door, turned and caught Lorcan in a youthful fantasy. Her eyes locked onto his for a split second, a hint of a grin curled as she announced Lorcan’s presence to Mr. McCullen.

            A flush of blood warmed his cheeks and ears.

            Mr. McCullen sat before a bright fire, warm and orange inside the gray granite hearth. An immaculate federalist style desk stood in front of elegant windows on one side of the study and faced a wall of books on the opposite side. He waved Lorcan closer. Clair closed the tall oak door behind him.

            As Lorcan approached, he gazed at a chrome mask displayed at the center of the study atop a dark wooden pedestal with a white marble top. Protected under glass, the mask, molded into rigid human features, shined like a silvery mirror, yet appeared as rough hewn iron behind the mouth and eyes slits.

            “Lorcan, please listen to this piece and tell me what you think.”

            Lorcan joined Mr. McCullen in a patent claret leather chair with brass buttons and carved claw and ball feet in front of the fire.

            Musical instruments wound up from hidden speakers. Noises floated in and out, came together briefly.

            “It sounds like shite,” Lorcan said.

            Mr. McCullen cracked the slightest grin, held one finger for patience.

            The sounds joined in a high tone, dropped off subtly. A moment of discordant silence, then a full orchestra thundered. Lorcan jumped at the suddenness. Crisp and clear, almost too loud for him to handle, the music continued in powerful, abrupt notes. The entire orchestra hushed for a step, yet the movement continued on the lilt of a clarinet. More thunder broke in, back and forth. Energy increased. Measure over measure, elements criss-crossed, built strength in their cadence. All instruments supported the rush into anticipation, yet the melody twisted away. It defied expectation. Then deep vibrations layered ominous tones while violas carried the lead violin into a frenetic crescendo.

            Another lull.

            Timbers crackled in the fireplace, a faint smoky scent lingered in the absence of sound. Again the double basses hummed in tones almost too low for human perception. Their deep resonance seemed to emanate from the fire. More instruments joined in a foreboding drone. Like storm clouds on the horizon, the pace quickened, dark and thick, violence in their midst. The original sequence returned, but in a cadence more unsettling than when it had begun.

            And then it ended.

            Mr. McCullen paused at the silence, tilted his head back with the same slight grin and said, “The first movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. His Ode to Joy. Some believe this piece to be the ravings of madness. Others say it’s pure genius on display.”

            Lorcan nodded. “With all due respect, I still think it’s shite. Besides, it didn’t sound very joyful.”

            “Ahhh, a man of discriminating tastes.” Mr. McCullen swirled a snifter of brandy, sipped. “I see many similarities in you and Ludwig van Beethoven. He, too, came from a working class family to live the better part of his life mingling in royal courts. Do not despair your circumstance, lad. You’re not alone.”

            Mr. McCullen set the snifter on a side table crafted to match the pedestal with the mask. He stood straight and tall in creased black trousers and a black velvet smoking jacket with red lapels, stepped before the mantle and held a small globe up to his examination.

            “What do you want most from this life, Lorcan Farris?”

            His real name fit into a wholesome place within his identity.

            “I’d like to liberate Ireland, sir.” Lorcan said it, yet only half believed it. To avenge his mother and make his father proud counted more than liberation.

            “Such a heavy task for one so young,” Mr. McCullen said. “It’s obvious you miss your home. Though I don’t believe you wish to face the consequences that await.”

            Lorcan gazed into the fire, nodded in solemn agreement.

            Mr. McCullen set the globe in its place, faced Lorcan. Vermillion flames backlit Laird Destro in a heated, seething glow. His power, his authority ignited the noble air around him. Shadows flickered across his face, but his blue eyes remained crystal clear and deadly still.

            “How would you like one last trip through your old neighborhood to tie up loose ends?”

            Lorcan stared at Mr. McCullen. He searched the man for sincerity, for lies, for cruelty in a joke. A fiery halo waivered and flowed, broad grin and steady eyes beamed from a dim shadow. The Ulster bastards, Joshy and his boys, the only loose ends Lorcan had to tie up. He paused. _Those can’t be what Mr. McCullen is talking about_.

            He’d take the trip to Ireland, though if only to retrieve some clothes and say goodbye to the one city he’d ever known. “I would like that.”

            Mr. McCullen smiled. “Then first let me show you to my rumpus room.”

*12*

            Two stout servants, the same men who’d delivered Mr. McCullen’s shipments to Belfast, hoisted Lorcan’s luggage and followed him out the rumpus room. For three days Lorcan locked himself in the fully equipped basement laboratory and built four perfect bombs, just like his father taught him, for his trip home. Good ones with real charges. No pressure cookers, no cleaning chemicals, just plastique explosive.

            Clair held the front door open for Lorcan. A delicate breeze ruffled her skirt just above her knees. He smiled at her. She returned the gesture with a slight curtsy as the little master of the castle departed.

            From a constant fluorescent bath of white light on white surfaces with sterile air at a stable temperature, Lorcan emerged into a new world. The sun shined between puffy, windswept clouds. Sculpted shrubs and manicured grass glowed emerald green. The gentle wind blew fresh and cool.

            Lorcan stepped into the back seat of a black Rolls Royce limousine. Mr. McCullen followed. The driver closed the doors while the two servants loaded Lorcan’s luggage and hopped into the second limousine waiting behind.

            Without a word both cars started up and headed off. Lorcan glanced out the back window, watched Clair shrink out of view.

            “You fancy the lass, I see,” Mr. McCullen said.

            Verdant hills, rustic villages with sheep and wooden fences rolled by the limousine’s window. Simple people living quiet lives, at home in peace and tranquility. Clair’s gentle character came from such good people, her natural beauty from the land.

            “It’s never wise to mingle with the help. Motivations on both sides became obscured.”

            Lorcan recoiled. Mr. McCullen caught his long gaze at Clair and placed a barrier to the one comfort that nurtured Lorcan’s wounded soul.

            “But there are no explicit rules against it,” Mr. McCullen said. “If you choose to ally with someone outside your station, be sure you understand the nature of their motivations.”

            Lorcan’s slight frown cracked into a smile.

*13*

            Emerald hills and dales dropped off at the dark blue Atlantic Ocean. Mr. McCullen’s limousine parked beside a private yacht moored along the quay. A few rusty fishing trawlers and a couple dozen sail boats dotted the harbor, but the yacht dwarfed them all.

            “Is this our stop?” Lorcan asked and slid across the black leather seat to open the door.

            Mr. McCullen raised a palm for him to stop. “Patience, Mr. Farris. I pay very good money for people to sully their hands for me.”

            The limousine driver stepped lively around the car and performed his duty with more pomp than the simple task required.

            Lorcan read _Vashka_ in blue cursive letters across the yacht’s white bow. “I’ve never been on a boat before,” he said. The ship’s captain stood at the gangplank, snapped a sharp salute. Mr. McCullen nodded back. Lorcan flinched to salute, yet emulated his benefactor and simply nodded as he followed Mr. McCullen aboard.

            “Make way immediately, Captain,” Mr. McCullen said over his shoulder.

            “Aye, sir.”

            As the servants boarded with Lorcan’s luggage, the gangplank retracted. Lorcan stood on the stern, peered over the rail. The engines hummed, stirred dark green maelstroms as the screws thrust sea water aft. Within minutes the one hundred and sixty foot yacht glided forward, headed out the mouth of the harbor and into the blustery North Atlantic.

            Sea swells rolled beneath the _Vashka_. The bow rose and sank and rose again. Lorcan’s stomach buckled. Another wave carried the ship, dropped it into a trough. Watery saliva coated Lorcan’s mouth, his eyes drooped and his breakfast churned.

            “Try to focus on the horizon, lad.” Mr. McCullen said. “Unfortunately there’s no way around it. You’ll just have to pay your dues.”

            Lorcan’s stomach heaved with the sea and before they left Great Britton’s territorial waters, he lost it over the rail.

            “A couple more days and you’ll be as salty as the rest of us,” Mr. McCullen said and patted Lorcan on his back. “When you’ve finished feeding the fish, clean up and join me in the main cabin.”

            Lorcan heaved again. He wouldn’t be finished for a while.

*14*

            Beige painted walls curved overhead to form the sleek interior contour of Mr. McCullen’s private submarine nested inside the _Vashka’s_ cargo hold. Lorcan closed his eyes, tightened his fists, fought off the claustrophobia that compressed every square inch of his flesh into a tensed, huddled knot of nerves.

            “Sub-pen is flooded,” one of two servants said from the cockpit in front. “One hundred percent ballast. _Vashka’s_ keel doors are open.”

            A tremor ran through the plastic swivel chairs and up Lorcan’s spine. His breath held in his throat.

            “Locks disengaged.” Lorcan’s seat dropped as the submarine angled into a dive. He clenched his armrests, gritted his teeth against the gentle sway and glide.

            “Relax, Lorcan,” Mr. McCullen said from the seat behind him. “Learn to control your fear so that it won’t control you.”

            “We’ve cleared the _Vashka_. Course is set,” the servant in the pilot’s seat said. Droning diesel engines, agitating screw propellers and turbulent water noises receded into liquid-smooth silence beneath the sea. “Estimated time, four hours to Belfast Harbour.”

            Lorcan closed his eyes, tightened his shoulders into a smaller ball, crushed by the duration as much as the water all around.

*15*

            A heavy jolt shook the submarine. A gruff voice from the cockpit said, “We’re docked, sir.”

            Lorcan stood, his nerves about to burst. Mr. McCullen took a moment to stretch in the narrow crew compartment. He yawned, tilted his head this way and that.

            Eyes wide, his chest constricted, Lorcan’s control wavered. A silent scream tore from the primitive foundation of his being, commanding Mr. McCullen to move out of the way so he could escape.

            Mr. McCullen languidly climbed a metal ladder out of the submarine. Sea water trickled through the opening. Dim, fluorescent lighting and a salty, rusty scent sank inside and replaced the fresh, bottled air. With room to move, Lorcan climbed out fast, landed on a scaffold runner that led to a companionway inside the hold of another ship.

            Up the steps and through another deck. The fluorescent lights brightened a grimy room with tools and spare parts hanging from the walls. Diesel fumes clung to the air, clogged Lorcan’s sinuses. Mr. McCullen led them up two more flights of rickety metal stairs into cleaner quarters and out onto the main deck of an empty freighter.

            Heavy mist carried in the night air. Above water, out of the stench and fumes, Lorcan relaxed his shoulders, breathed deep and recognized the scent of his Belfast. Deck lights at the ship’s bow seemed to stretch two hundred yards. The harbor lay quiet. No utility trucks, no ship’s horns, just two limousines parked below.

            Cold aluminum rails slid through Lorcan’s hands as he marched down the gangplank with the other men. At the bottom, one of the servants opened the car door for Mr. McCullen and him. Lorcan entered second, startled when he noticed someone else already in the back seat.

            “It’s good to see you, Lorcan,” Brian said and drew Lorcan in for a hug. “You’ve grown so much. Mr. McCullen must be feedin’ you good.”

            “He is,” Lorcan said with a wide, contented grin.

            The door closed, the limousine accelerated.

            “I’m sorry your father had to get caught, Lorcan, but we’ll fix things up as best we can tonight.” Brian turned to Mr. McCullen. “Thanks for bringin’ him back. It’ll be nice workin’ with a Farris again.”

            Mr. McCullen smiled. “Don’t get too used to him. He’s got school to attend.”

            “Good, good. I’m glad he’s getting’ an education. He’ll do great things one day.”

            “Indeed, he will,” Mr. McCullen said and stared at Lorcan with a father’s pride.

            The limousine stopped beside another car headed in the opposite direction. A dark blue 1978 Triumph Dolomite. Brian opened the limousine door, stepped out. Mr. McCullen’s servants hustled from their car and transferred Lorcan’s bags into the Triumph.

            “Let’s go, Lorcan,” Brian said.

            “Take special care. I’d like him back for breakfast.”

            “Aye.”

            Lorcan hopped from the limousine into the Triumph’s backseat. Brian sat in front beside the driver. A smile drew in the dark. He’d returned to Ireland and met a friend, someone he’d looked up to all his life.

            The Triumph sped south into the industrial heart of Belfast. Warehouses and textile factories lined the empty streets. Murals dedicated to Protestant oppressors stood twenty feet tall across weathered brick walls. Concertina wire crowned chain link fences, vicious dogs barked and snarled at any movement. The entire city appeared at a relative calm in the balmy night. Shuttered windows, locked gates, desolate avenues, all the warning signs of pride and violence heeded by the weary Belfast citizens. Lorcan had made it home.

            “Meet us in eight minutes on Farmingdale Street,” Brian said to the driver and pulled a black wool mask over his face, then passed a mask back to Lorcan. The Triumph stopped in an alley, behind an old factory building. “This is our first stop, Lorcan.”

            Brian rifled through one of the bags in the trunk. Lorcan stepped behind him, donned his gray balaclava. Three items were taken, the trunk closed quietly. Brian spun backward as the car drove away.

            On foot in an alley, loneliness and isolation gripped Lorcan. Brian marched along, but kept Lorcan in the dark about the target, where they’d plant his devices and how they’d escape if they were caught.

            Brian pushed back a section of chain link, slipped behind the fence and held it open for Lorcan. Inside, Brian took off at a near sprint through a fallow storage yard. Weeds snapped under foot, dried leaves crackled, zigzagging through forgotten product bins left to the elements. Lorcan stayed close though he couldn’t keep the pace.

            They banked around the building’s corner to the front offices. Brian stopped, ducked behind a shrub. He handed Lorcan a bomb, said, “Set it for….” He checked his watch. “Two hours thirty-seven minutes. We’ll plant them here, there and one on the far end.”

            Lorcan nodded. He dialed in the time while Brian set another device. They sprinted to the building’s front door, planted the last bomb and covered it with a sheaf of newspaper.

            Brian led Lorcan to a dark corner of the front fence. He scaled the chain link to a gap in the concertina wire, folded over the top at his waist and flung his legs straight up. A half twist and Brian landed on his feet, ready to run. Lorcan climbed up behind Brian, swung one leg over and straddled the fence. In a clumsy lunge he brought his other leg over. One foot at a time, he found a toe hold, lowered himself, found another toe hold. A yard up he jumped to imitate Brian the best he could.

            “You need to get faster,” Brian said. He stood straight, walked from behind a bush to the waiting Triumph.

            A subtle shame warmed Lorcan’s neck. He’d tried, but couldn’t meet his mentor’s expectation with something as simple as climbing a fence.

            “Any problems?” the driver asked.

            “None. It went perfect. Proceed to target two.”

            _It didn’t go prefect,_ Lorcan thought as he hashed over his fence climbing skills. _Why is Brian lying for me?_

            Brian angled around in the front seat to face Lorcan.

            “Okay,” he said. “This second place is supposed to be guarded. The bastards are amateur thugs so they’ll probably be sleepin’ off the lager. But we still have to be silent. You understand?”

            Lorcan nodded in the dark.

            “We’ll come up between apartment blocks. It’ll be narrow and they have trip wire alarms. Just empty beer cans with rocks in ‘em, but they work. Stay close. I’ll point ‘em out. When we get to the house we’ll plant the small bomb at the back door. Then set the big one to go off when the front door opens. That way we’ll get Joshy on his way out.”

            A broad, toothy smile pulled Lorcan’s cheeks until they ached.

            The Triumph stopped in another dark alley beside rubbish bins. Brian and Lorcan drew down their masks, stepped to the trunk and grabbed one of the two bags. The Triumph pulled away, left them on their own again.

            Brian stepped silently into the dark, avoided sticks, cans, puddles, anything that could’ve made a noise. Along shadowed edges he stalked like a lion, crept in close with a keen eye on the situation ahead.

            Lorcan followed close behind into the narrow passage between a three story apartment block and Joshy’s house. Less than a yard wide, if anyone heard him coming there would be no place to hide, no room to escape the kill zone.

            Brian pointed out a wire six inches off the ground. They stepped over it. He found another and a third. All easily mitigated.

            Blue flickering lights shone against cigarette smoke stained drapes. The guard Brian had warned about watched television, though a lack of lively noise suggested the person had fallen asleep.

            Brian unzipped the bag with tiny, hesitant pulls. He took the smaller device, checked his watch and set the timer for two hours and six minutes.

            With a raised palm, he told Lorcan to stay. Brian tip-toed into the back porch light. A shadow grew on the apartment wall big enough to rival the propaganda paintings Lorcan had seen on his ride into Belfast.

            _He doesn’t see his own shadow,_ Lorcan thought as he watched his mentor creep to the back door. _Brian’s missing details._

            Bomb set, Brian slunk back to Lorcan. They move toward the front of the house, ducked below the flickering window.

            Someone watched television, someone responsible for his father’s arrest. Lorcan wanted to know who, he had to see a face before they paid their due for ratting on his father. He jumped, caught a glimpse inside. Joshy sat in front of the television, head hung forward, passed out with a dozen empty lager cans around him. Lorcan’s anger flared, his muscles heated in a flash of rage as he envisioned holding a carving knife. _I can kill Joshy without bombs!_

            Brian spun around. A furrowed brow and sharp glare told Lorcan he’d done wrong, though the sight of Joshy lounging while his father sat in prison muted any apologies.

            They squatted at the corner of the house. Brian took a long moment to scan the street in front. No cars, no people, no eyes tracking any movement. He crept sideways beneath a front window on the house’s stoop, reached way across and placed the big bomb behind the swing of the door with a string tied to the trigger.

            Brian scooted back, nodded to Lorcan. They crept away from the house, banked right, around the corner of the apartment building. Brian ducked into another alley and followed it to the opposite street where the Triumph waited.

            Lorcan and Brian jumped into the car. The driver stepped on the gas and asked, “Any problems?”

            Cold sweat broke out across Lorcan’s brow.

            “It went perfect,” Brian said. “There’s room for improvement, but the mission is accomplished.”

            _Room for improvement?_ Lorcan wondered. The quick look could’ve ruined everything, though Brian didn’t scold or denigrate him.

            “But our next target has no margin for error. The Ulster Defense Association’s safe house is a fortress. Their guards don’t pass out drunk. They keep at least two automatic rifles manned around the clock. We think they have a sniper in the attic vent. We’ve counted no less than six people in the house at any given time and as many as forty for meetin’s and drink-fests. The houses to either side and behind are Unionist and sympathetic to their UDA neighbor so any detection from them will alert the Ulster bastards.”

            “We don’t have to do this. If it’s too dangerous then—”

            “Nay, we have one plan and you’re the only person small enough pull it off. Besides, I was there, Lorcan. I watched them shoot your mother down in cold blood. We’re getting’ the bastards tonight!”

            The driver stopped at a traffic sign. Brian and Lorcan got out with the last duffle bag. They moved through the dark like specters beneath shadows, silent, yet quick. Behind apartment blocks, through alleys, across people’s yards in a winding path outside expectations.

            Brian settled in shade at the base of a telephone pole, checked his watch and programmed both bomb timers.

            He peered at Lorcan through the wool ski mask with a mix of trust and danger in his eyes. “This one’s all yours. Climb the pole, shinny across the telephone line, but whatever you do, don’t touch a second wire. Some of those have high voltage runnin’ through ‘em and if you’re not careful it’ll getcha. When you get to the near side of the house, lower your first device beside its wall with the twine. Do the same on the other side then climb all the way across, two houses down to the next pole. You got it?”

            Lorcan nodded yes, but the climb, the high voltage wires, lowering bombs on twine while suspended in the air scared him to his adolescent foundation.

            “You can do it, Lorcan. Me, and the rest of Ireland, believe in you.”

            A sniffle hitched in Lorcan’s nose.

            He straightened his gray balaclava, slung the duffle bag over his shoulder. Brian laced his fingers, boosted Lorcan up to the pole’s lowest rung. Lorcan climbed to the top, gripped the telephone line. He pulled himself away from the pole, swung upside down and hooked his ankles over. Hand over hand, he scooted beneath the wire, his bomb laden duffle swinging with every pull.

            Hanging twenty-five feet high, a sense of purpose, of living for something bigger than himself warmed Lorcan against the chilly night. As he thought of his new life where he could hold his head high, a peer of his heroes, his trepidation evaporated. Only he and the wire existed. There was no fight with gravity. The risk didn’t compare to the reward that waited for him at the bottom of the far pole.

            Lorcan scooted above the Ulster bastards’ safe house. He tried with one hand to unzip the bag, but the loose material bunched when he pulled. He reached to straighten it, made a move for the zipper. The bag slid over his head and off his shoulder. In one move, on instinct alone, Lorcan reached and caught the duffle at the end of its strap.

            _Shite!_

            Lorcan’s arms strained. He grabbed the wire with his left.

            A memory from elementary school struck. His grip tightened. He drew a leg under, then across the top of the wire. With both legs on one side he released his hands. Lorcan dangled upside down by his knees, jiggled the zipper, pulled out his first device and lowered it into place. _One down._ He stretched, seized the wire and righted himself.

            Within two minutes Lorcan scurried to the second wall, hung upside down and planted the last bomb where Brian had said.

            _Now to get out._ The distance slid by faster than he could’ve hoped. Lorcan’s muscles hurt, the backs of his knees ached, but the minor pains invigorated him, pushed him harder until the end pole came into reach. Hands on the rungs, one leg released, the other slipped. Lorcan clenched the rung tight and swung. His body slammed the pole, yet he held on, got a footing and descended to solid concrete. His muscles strained, soft calluses tore back on his palms, but Lorcan beamed a smile he couldn’t pretend to contain.

            The car arrived. Lorcan hopped in the back seat.

            The driver asked as he sped from the scene, “How did it go?”

            “Perfect,” Lorcan replied. He flexed his hands, smoothed the skin flaps in place with the side of his thumb. They drove around a few city blocks, parked in front of an alley. Brian slipped from the shadows and into the front seat. He, too, wore a grin visible through the mask.

            Brian said, excitement unrestrained, “I thought you were done for.” Then to the driver, “We’ve got a little monkey, here. He dropped the bag, but caught it, then hung upside down by his knees so he could use both hands. It was bloody brilliant!”

            The driver pressed the gas pedal, drove the Triumph south out of Belfast. Early morning sun absorbed the stars and lightened the black night to dark blue. Lorcan had graduated, he’d accomplished something no one else could have and earned the admiration of people he looked up to.

            Brian checked his watch. “And there they all go,” he said. “You’ve got your revenge.”

            They pulled along the fishing quay next to a rusty old trawler. Heaps of netting, buoys and crab traps lined the dock. Seagulls kept a keen eye on the strangers, squawked, but didn’t fly away.

            “This is your stop, Lorcan,” Brian said. “You did some fine work tonight. Remember, you’ve got family in Belfast. We’ll always be here for you.”

            Tears lined Lorcan’s eyes. The sniffle returned. He and Brian stepped out. Brian hugged Lorcan, showed him he truly cared.

            “You’d better be going.” Brian motioned away.

            Mr. McCullen appeared from behind a pile of soggy fishing nets with a subtle smile.

            “Thank you, Brian. I’ll never forget this,” Lorcan said and drifted toward Mr. McCullen.

            Before Lorcan could look back, the Triumph had sped off.

            Mr. McCullen said, “I understand you’ve had a busy night.” He led Lorcan onto the trawler, down the companionway into the hold. A heavy scent of rotting fish and stale bilge filled the cavernous chamber. Both servants waited and opened a hidden hatch as Mr. McCullen and Lorcan approached.

            Lorcan eased into the submarine, took his seat and relaxed, a smile still creasing his face. Usual chatter, typical shudders, extended periods of silence. None of it frightened him. He’d lived through it before, he would live through it again.

*16*

            Lorcan sat alone in the main cabin and watched the evening news broadcast from Belfast as the _Vashka_ headed south for Corsica. Shaky images lit across the screen of the Unionist political headquarters, Joshy’s ruined home, and the Ulster bastards’ safe house. All three places were reduced to cinders.

            Defense attorneys for Pearce Farris brought evidence before the judge that proved he wasn’t the nefarious Firefly Bomber. They claimed the type and style of the bombs used couldn’t have been made by anyone else. The judge agreed to hear further testimony along those lines, though even if the Firefly Bomber case was dropped Pearce still faced twenty years in person for carrying explosives.

            Lorcan bid a bonny farewell to the land he loved. He would never worry about the people who killed his mother, the bastards that ratted on his father, or taking another drunken beating again. With his sea legs beneath him, Lorcan sailed into a wide open future free from his chaotic childhood.

*17*

            Lorcan hung his head as Mr. McCullen stared at him through the iron bars of the Callander County Jail. Three of his friends shared his cell, co-conspirators in a little grand theft auto and drunken joy ride around the countryside. It wasn’t his idea, but he had fun with his friends, with the only people that accepted him after six years in Scotland.

            Mr. McCullen nodded and the bailiff opened the cell’s gate.

            “Come on, Flannigan. You get to go home,” the bailiff said to Lorcan.

            Lorcan stood, glanced at his friends, but they looked away. They didn’t say anything. Their silence thinned the air, set him apart from the gang. Shannon and his gang ran wild in the quiet streets of Callander. They were known and feared and Lorcan’s association gave him a streak of superiority in a school that otherwise shunned his existence. Steal some beer, smoke some cigarettes, get pissed, get in a fight. All in good fun on any given night.

            Mr. McCullen did not approve of Lorcan’s associates. They were hoodlums and thieves who sought entertainment at other people’s expense.

            But they were his friends. He deserved all the punishment they faced.

            The bailiff locked the gate behind Lorcan, led him and Mr. McCullen into another room. A small space, much like the jail cells, with a table and four chairs. The white walls faded to a dingy yellow at the ceiling where the tar of a million cigarettes collected during countless interrogations. Wedged into the corner a twenty-seven inch color television stood atop a metal cart on wheels. The bailiff plugged it into the wall socket, screwed in a coaxial cable and flicked the set on. As crinkly static built across the screen, a closed circuit image of the jail cell appeared.

            Mr. McCullen dropped a massive hand on Lorcan’s shoulder and pushed him into a chair. He stood behind in dead, disappointed silence. The kind of silence that screamed at a guilty conscience.

            Another officer entered the jail cell, questioned Shannon and his gang. “So which one of you boys was it that broke in and hot-wired the car?” the officer asked.

            Without hesitation, not even a sideways glance, all three said in unison, “Lorcan Flannigan.”

            Shannon, Lorcan’s best friend of the three, went into great detail how they didn’t want to do it, that they only followed to keep Lorcan safe.

            “Bunch of lyin’ bastards!”

            “We’ve seen enough,” Mr. McCullen said.

            The bailiff clicked off the set.

            Mr. McCullen stared at Lorcan. “This situation bears a resemblance to another involving a man named… Joshy. Do you recognize the similarities, Mr. Flannigan?”

            Lorcan stared at his feet. Mr. McCullen had been right all along.

            Drunken debauchery led to arrest, the gang betrayed him and attempts to get away from Mr. McCullen only drew him closer. Lorcan left the Callander jail for Castle Destro, humiliated and alone once more.

*18*

            Lorcan caught Clair’s glance as he donned his undershirt. She averted her gaze, though a second late. He slowed his pace, took an extra moment to straighten out the seams, gave her another chance to steal a glimpse.

            Clair had matured into a stunning twenty year old woman. A long, slender neck line transitioned to sturdy milky white shoulders. He’d watched her since he’d arrived at Castle Destro, too young for the creature that brightened every room she entered. But Lorcan had changed over the last six years. He’d become the stout young master. Six foot one, 190 pounds and athletic. Other girls had shown interest, but Lorcan ignored them. He loved Clair ever since he was eleven.

            “How long will you be away?” Clair asked. She knew the answer, she had prepared Lorcan and Mr. McCullen’s luggage with specific details on wardrobe, yet dared to ask a personal question outside her responsibilities.

            Lorcan smiled as he held up a tuxedo vest for inspection. She’d crossed a boundary, took the chance to open a dialog as equals.

            “About a week, I believe,” Lorcan said. “Why?”

            A quick pout crossed Clair’s visage, but she recovered to impassive within the moment. He stepped around the bed, locked onto Clair’s eyes. She glanced away as if guilty of an immodest thought. A subtle rosy hue touched her cheeks. Her eyelashes fluttered. She captured timid glimpses as Lorcan approached.

            “So why do you want to know how long I’ll be away?” Lorcan asked. He stood in front of her in an undershirt, slacks and black socks. Her breath shortened.

            “So that I can prepare for your return.” A contrite grin and nod completed her duty.

            Lorcan touched both of Clair’s elbows. He stared into her eyes, slid his fingers down her forearms, took both her hands in his.

            “I cannot leave, Clair, without letting you know how I feel.”

            “No, Master Flannigan, I can’t—”

            “I have to say it, Clair. I’m in love with you. I have been since the day I arrived.”

            Clair tightened her fingers around his. “But I’m only a maid.”

            Lorcan’s grin broadened. “You’ve been closer to me than anyone else here and I want us to be closer still.”

            Before Clair could protest, Lorcan clasped her around the waist and kissed her. She resisted for a polite second, yet fell into his embrace. Her warmth penetrated Lorcan’s body, filled the hollowness of so many years watching, waiting. A sweet vanilla scent mingled with the light sweat of her work day. He kissed her long, graceful neck, her shoulder. She gasped a single breath.

            Lorcan didn’t push, Clair didn’t pull, though both drifted to the fresh made bed. She collapsed backward. Lorcan followed. They scooted and adjusted to better comfort without breaking their kiss. He opened his eyes. Clair’s thin black eyebrows, long supple lashes twitched, as her eyes rolled behind squinted lids. She responded and played, initiated and retreated and then her eyes snapped open.

            Lorcan halted a moment, startled at her changed demeanor, but she didn’t stop. Between their lips and playful tongues, a smile tightened. She slid a hand to his cheek, kept him close as she stared into his eyes.

            Clair met Lorcan as an equal. Not a maid to a master, but a woman to a man. Heavy breaths, warm flesh, beating hearts. She slipped the kiss, pulled his mouth to the edge of her neck. He kissed the slender curve as she said on a sigh, “Get the lights.”

*19*

            White caps blew across the ocean’s surface far below. Wind and rain blanketed the English Channel in an even gray that spread from sea to sky, erasing the horizon. Lorcan glared through the window of Mr. McCullen’s private jet at the choppy sea lost in memories of Clair’s sweet vanilla scent, her dark eyes and soft breasts.

            “You’ve come to terms with both of your motivations, I trust,” Mr. McCullen said, seated across from Lorcan in a tan leather captain’s chair. His inimical, unblinking stare from below a lowered brow commanded Lorcan to analyze his relationship with the maid.

            “I have. I accept Clair for who she is, not what she does for a living,” Lorcan said. He could still feel the silkiness of her black hair across his cheek. Her long calves brushing against his, her gentle touch smoothing up his flanks until her finger nails scratched into his shoulder blades.

            “Understand, Lorcan, I hired a maid. I pay for a maid. If, for any reason, I am no longer satisfied with my maid, I’ll find a new maid. I will not permit her slack on the duties I pay for simply because you cannot control your libido.”

            An instant rage burned in Lorcan, but he bit his lip, went back to his view out the window. “Yes, I understand.”

*20*

            “Two minutes, sir,” Mr. McCullen’s pilot called back on the private jet’s intercom.

            Lorcan stared at verdant rural farms scattered across the country side, outlined by hedgerows, hemmed in by rolling hills. The plane bucked and jerked over a lush mountain range. Lorcan watched from his periphery as Mr. McCullen stood, walked to the lavatory despite the turbulence.

            The rugged continental landscape crept past the plane, an occasional cloud here and there, white as the skin on Clair’s stomach. Clair was more than a maid, more than a disposable employee. They’d become lovers, yet Mr. McCullen spoke of her with no more regard than a tool, an implement for his convenience.

            The lavatory door opened. Heavy footsteps marched along the narrow aisle. Mr. McCullen sat heavily into his chair. A distant glint caught the corner of Lorcan’s eye. Not from cars or houses below, not from another passing plane, but from inside the cabin.

            Lorcan glanced at Mr. McCullen and jumped in his seat.

            Mr. McCullen donned the polished chrome mask from the pedestal in the study. His sharp, blue eyes shown from dark shadows behind the shiny metal. The mask’s features matched Mr. McCullen’s, like a statue with the living subject contained within, yet contradicted his fastidious composure and his stable demeanor.

            Lorcan shifted beneath the expressionless stare, all questions and no words.

            “It’s about honor,” Mr. McCullen said, his voice deepened with an echo from inside the mask. “This mask is a symbol my family has worn with pride since 1649. What was supposed to be a permanent sentence of humiliation came to define my ancestors’ strength of will. We, of the clan Destro, sell weapons, we make our own destiny and all that engage with us know by mere sight who they’re dealing with, even if they don’t know our true identities.”

            The castle, the crest, all properties of a long and prosperous family, though when Mr. McCullen spoke of the mask, he spoke of tradition and honor.

            “But why do you have to where the mask now? It was interesting in the study, but this looks… strange.”

            Mr. McCullen’s mask didn’t move. It never deviated from the forged impassiveness of the last three hundred and forty years.

            “This is business, Lorcan. The business that has been in my family for centuries. What appears strange to you is bred naturally into me.”

            “Still—”

            “Do you know why I’ve brought you along?”

            Lorcan shook his head no.

            “Because you need direction. Your talents are not commensurate with the street criminals that used you to save their own skins. You need a purpose, a reason to wake up every morning. Your maid will wait for you, but first you must learn a profession. You are to accompany me on an important business venture. One that promises to be profitable for many years.”

            The plane canted forward. Electric motors whirred, wing flaps folded down. Lorcan’s weight shifted with deceleration.

            “I need you at my side for this presentation. I need you to pay attention and say nothing.”

            The plane nosed up. A thick, dense forest passed outside the windows. Mr. McCullen excluded Lorcan from his work. He’d disappear for weeks and reappear as if no time had passed. The few occasions Lorcan asked about his business, Mr. McCullen deflected the question, turned to trivial subjects. Disappointment wore down Lorcan’s curiosity, made him feel like the company he was. Allowed to use the premises, but never to explore the closets.

            Tire skids chirped into the cabin. The plane’s nose came down. Without forewarning, without preparation, Mr. McCullen included Lorcan on business. _But why now?_

            More electric motors buzzed and the plane’s reverse thrust jolted against momentum. Lorcan leaned forward, held against his seat belt until his velocity aligned with the plane’s.

            At a low, rolling speed the pilot taxied the plane right, brought it into an aluminum hanger. The engines wound down, cabin lights blinked on and the door opened automatically.

            Mr. McCullen stood, said, “This day is yours, Lorcan Ferris,” and exited the plane, chrome mask glittering in the sunshine.

*21*

            Dense woods and arboreal villages lined the foreign countryside. Lorcan adjusted in the backseat of a 1920s pre-war Mercedes Benz limousine as it bounced over miles of dirt roads to a medieval castle, far grander and more majestic than Castle Destro, with stone walls hewn from the soil by serfs a thousand years ago. The virgin forest, the animals, the people still belonged to the master of the castle, their servitude an unbroken covenant as natural as air and water. Towering spires, crenulated redoubts, a fresh moat. The castle remained fixed in the past, a monument to an age long forgotten.

            The limousine crossed a draw bridge, parked in a primitive wooden carport that could’ve been a barn a week earlier. A maid of twelve years old in a black and white ankle length dress, spoke in a language Lorcan couldn’t identify. Mr. McCullen tipped his shiny head and followed the girl into the castle. She led them through the foyer where sculpted marble busts of serious men stood in a semicircle guarding the entryway. They passed into a long corridor carpeted in plush crimson. Painted portraits of dead barons lined both walls and stared down from their hand carved, gold leafed frames on all who treaded by. The girl showed them into another room, a stark white, post modern office.

            Sharp, black eyes tracked Mr. McCullen and Lorcan the moment they entered. The man stood from behind a glass topped desk clad in a tailored business suit and a broad smile. A crest bearing a hideous eagle, its wings spread, an orb and scepter clutched in its talons, adorned the wall behind him.

            “Destro, welcome. Please come in,” the man said, his hands outstretched as if he gave a hug from across the room.

            “Baron, it is good to see you, my friend,” Mr. McCullen replied. He shook hands and introduced Lorcan Flannigan to Marius Cisarovna, Baron of Timis, the traditional kingdom of the Southern Carpathian Mountains along the western edge of Romania.

            Lorcan tipped his head in a contrite bow, but heard Mr. McCullen use the false last name. Mr. McCullen hid his face and Lorcan’s identity from a nobleman, a person supposed to be superior by birth.

            His tone warm and appreciative, Baron Cisarovna said, “Destro, I’m very happy you could fit me into your schedule on such short notice.” He waved a hand to a light gray sectional sofa at the rear of the office. Mr. McCullen accepted the invitation, Lorcan sat beside him, the Baron reclined on the adjacent section.

            The comfortable seats fostered an atmosphere of friendship while the desk kept business close at hand. Far richer than Mr. McCullen, the Baron made himself vulnerable, he needed something that he couldn’t acquire on his own and Lorcan heard the reverence in his voice.

            “And your apprentice is so young.”

            Compliments to soften the hard edge of their meeting. Lorcan caught a twitch in the pleasant smile, a hand slid down his thigh to dry a nervous sweat.

            “Yes, I have high expectations for Mr. Flannigan,” Mr. McCullen said.

            “With that I welcome you to Timis, Mr. Flannigan. You will always find friends among my people.” The Baron tilted his head a slight degree to Lorcan.

            Lorcan smiled, said nothing.

            “And how is Baroness Anastasia?” Mr. McCullen asked.

            “My wife is a very busy woman these days. I’m sure she will be along shortly,” the Baron said with a cordial grin.

            “I cannot wait to meet her again. Please tell me the details of her business.”

            The Baron leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees and stared into Mr. McCullen’s masked eyes.

            “I am afraid conflict is inevitable. We cannot stay out of it. My countrymen have an obligation to our ethnic brethren in their time of struggle.”

            “That sounds troublesome, but I understand. Everyone must stand by their own,” Mr. McCullen replied.

            “While under normal circumstances we would not have a problem, but the world has changed. You must understand, Destro, that I love my country, my people.” The Baron’s volume increased. Passion and pride filled his voice. “The Grand Soviet is faltering. We are left to our own. The United Nations has threatened embargoes if we accept assistance from Moscow. Many Russian generals have offered us weapons, but the West has too many spies watching, waiting for an excuse to punish communists.”

            “Yes, the boundaries of influence are fluctuating. But then, they’ve always been fluid.”

            “The old way was better. When the Soviet would give weapons to anyone who asked for them.”

            “Do not fret, Marius. We will get you what you need.”

            The Baron sat up, breathed a deep sigh. “Thank you, Destro. My country, my people will sing your praises when the final battle is ours.”

            Mr. McCullen’s mask never moved. “While I will appreciate the good tidings, I will leave the glory to you, my friend. May I see your inventory statements, estimations on opposition force strength and attrition rates?”

            Lorcan saw a nervous fidget in the Baron. The proud ruler of a secluded province displayed the same nervousness his father showed when he wanted explosives without money.

            “I have the inventory statement here,” the Baron said and walked to his desk. He unlocked the top drawer and removed a file folder quickly, as though he’d practiced the motions before they’d arrived. “You’ll see here what we have in stock and the supplements we believe required.”

            Mr. McCullen stood and met the Baron at the center of the office. Warm, incandescent light from recessed canisters in the ceiling glittered off the polished silvery mask, though Mr. McCullen’s expression remained rigid and cold. The mask hid any emotion, hesitation, or uncertainty, it left nothing for interpretation.

            “One moment, please. My wife will have the intelligence reports with attrition rates.” The Baron stutter-stepped to his desk, picked up the phone receiver. He spoke in Romanian a sentence or two and hung up. “Do you believe these quantities are within your abilities?”

            Mr. McCullen engaged the Baron in a motionless stare. “I have the resources, but the volume of material will be problematic to transfer. Mobilization by air comes with a price.”

            The Baron cringed. Slight, yet Lorcan detected the discomfort.

            The office door opened. A woman entered dressed in a black business suit, black-framed glasses and black hair tied into a bun against porcelain white skin. This lady’s resemblance to Clair triggered an uneasiness in Lorcan. A decade older, more mature, more confident than Clair, this woman’s bold charisma made Clair’s work-a-day ways appear simple and base. _That’s the difference between common and noble-born,_ Lorcan thought.

            “Baroness Anastasia, a pleasure to meet you again,” Mr. McCullen said. He took the lady’s hand, held it to his metallic lips as if to kiss.

            With a smooth, slightly deep tone to her London accented English, the Baroness said, “Destro, the pleasure is always mine. Who do you have here?”

            “This is my apprentice, Lorcan Flannigan.”

            “Pleased to meet you,” the Baroness said, though she stayed outside handshaking range.

            “Lorcan, may I introduce Baroness Anastasia Cisarovna.”

            “Hi,” Lorcan replied. Caught in the Baroness’s black eyes, he couldn’t manage a better greeting.

            She squinted and grinned as though amusedly confused, then turned to Mr. McCullen. “Here is the intelligence analysis for Bosnia. The situation is deteriorating. We’re well prepared for the opening engagements, but we need material for sustained operations and training. Marius has established a series of training camps within the Timis borders away from the UN and NATO, but the conscripts need live ammunition to fire.”

            The Baroness addressed Mr. McCullen as an equal. Lorcan detected no hesitation in her posture, no flutters in her voice. She demanded while her husband begged.

            “And the training materials are included in the inventory statements?”

            “Yes,” the Baroness answered. “Half will be used to train the conscripts, the other half will see them to battle. Now, Destro, you have our request, it is your turn.”

            Mr. McCullen stood silent for a moment, said, “First I have one favor of my own to ask.”

            The Baroness raised an inquisitive eyebrow slightly above the rim of her glasses.

            “My apprentice needs an education. I believe he’d like to attend your illustrious academy.”

            She tilted her head, fixated on Lorcan with a malevolent grin. “I can schedule that. Now, your price.”

            “Five hundred million Deutsche Marks wired to my Singapore account.”

            “Marius, dear,” the Baroness said, still fixated on Lorcan. “Make the arrangements, please.”

            Marius flinched. “It’ll… it’ll take a moment.”

            “Of course. If you’ll excuse us, Mr. Flannigan and I must coordinate our logistics,” Mr. McCullen said.

            “By all means, and, Mr. Flannigan,” the Baroness said. “It is very nice to meet you.”

            Lorcan nodded as he and Mr. McCullen exited Baron Marius Cisarovna’s office.

            Mr. McCullen paced the long hallway, masked eyes pinned ahead without any hint of joy or accomplishment at the half billion Deutsche Mark price he’d secured. Lorcan kept up stride for stride, eyes turned to the portraits, though their significance lost to him in the sums and desperation that cornered the Barron.

            _Weapons and ammunition for training? Russian generals and Western spies?_ Lorcan wondered. Those elements were worlds apart from smuggling a few pounds of plastique explosive passed British customs agents. And school? In the midst of an arms deal to support open war, Mr. McCullen negotiated for an education. An education fit for royalty, not an Irish commoner.

            “When do you think I’ll start school,” he asked Mr. McCullen.

            “As soon as the Baroness wants you.”

            The young girl stood in the foyer and opened the front door where their limousine awaited. The teasing and fighting and humiliation of a new school cast a deep shadow over Lorcan. And the unknown time added uncertainty to his trepidation. But Clair waited for him. He’d find comfort in her warmth before and after his education. The car, the jet and home again to his love.

            “Lorcan, would you run inside and fetch the Baron’s inventory statement?” Mr. McCullen asked.

            “Sure.” Lorcan retraced his steps. Mr. McCullen had never asked Lorcan to do anything. Servants abounded, electronic communications carried sensitive information confidently. The request was out of character for Mr. McCullen. _No matter._

            The portraits lost all interest his third time through. Marble busts and plush carpets passed without thought. Clair’s deep eyes and kind smile beckoned him home even if one last chore held him back.

            A hinge squeaked behind him. Lorcan spun. A fist cracked his jaw. Everything went black.

*22*

            A cold, metal floor bounced and jostled Lorcan from a painful sleep, though he couldn’t see. His hands were tied behind his back, feet bound at the ankles, eyes blindfolded. He lay immobile on his left side and absorbed every sharp bump the floor shook into him. An engine reverberated through metal. A dull pain radiated from Lorcan’s jaw and intensified as his senses sharpened.

            _I’m in the back of a truck! Who’s got me? Joshy’s boys? I was in the Baron’s castle. They wouldn’t go there. The Ulster bastards?_ Lorcan’s head struck the truck bed with a thump, rung his brain and shot another bolt of pain through his skull.

            “Who are you?!” Lorcan shouted.

            A man with a thick Russian accent growled, “Quiet, pig.” The man pulled a damp cloth, heavy with petrol fumes, between Lorcan’s teeth and tied it tight around his head. Vapors clogged his throat, mixed with his saliva. He screamed for help, for mercy, for air, but the sound muffled in the toxic gag.

            Hour over hour, cut off from external perceptions, Lorcan’s cries faded to whimpers that faded to silence. His bladder gave way. Some Russian grumbling was the only response. No fresh clothes, no towels.

            The temperature dropped. A frosty chill shivered his flesh. Lorcan called out through the gag, but nobody talked to him. His wet pants froze and his cheek burned with cold against the metal floor. Lorcan curled into a ball, rolled back and forth, but the bare truck bed stole as much warmth as the frigid air.

            The truck stopped. Lorcan heard people move about, crunch over sticks, chatter in their glottal tongue. Still, they ignored his cries.

            A draft of warm camp-fire smoke puffed over Lorcan’s skin, mingled a natural scent with the petrol vapors. Timbers crackled and popped, two Russian voices rose louder, singing with the cadence of a nationalistic march while Lorcan froze.

            Untold hours measured by numb toes and fingers, spanned the persistent darkness behind the blindfold. The singing faded, the sporadic puffs of warmth disappeared. Material rustled, zippers opened and closed. Only the taste of petrol and the biting cold remained.

            Images of Clair faded in and out of dream. Warmth from Mr. McCullen’s hearth in the study cast illusions of well being. Lorcan endured the freezing burns on each cheek longer, rolled over fewer times as the temperature plummeted. Torturous intervals where his shoulders slipped their joints and cold seared his flesh roused him from delirium into the bitter pits of a nightmare. Thirst set in. More visions of maid Clair bringing him hot tea while he sat by the fire obscured his desperation.

            The natural end was death. No cold would bother him, no pressure on his wrists and shoulders to suffer. A sleep from which he’d never wake, never wake into uncertainty, a false name, or more pain again.

            “Why don’t you just kill me,” he shouted into the gag, but no one answered.

            His father’s joyful jig and tipsy smile danced in the haze of Lorcan’s anguish. The good times with both parents on festive holidays tugged a grin against the bitter chill. Yet Pearce, in prison for the rest of his life, would never know what became of his only child, and Lorcan would never have the chance to make his father proud.

            The chill broke and granted Lorcan time to sleep as the truck moved on. His lips dried then cracked, flesh, warmed by the sun, burned. Relief came with another temperature drop, but his sun-burnt flesh took the cold much faster. Fresh shivers rattled through his bones.

            The frosty air gave way to slushy rain. Lorcan lost the energy to shiver, lost the ability to ask for death. Relentless cold, no food or water, no clean clothes or human dignity. Clair couldn’t comfort, Pearce had no pride.

            The truck stopped. Lorcan’s limp body slumped forward.

            “Stand, you dog!” someone shouted and pulled Lorcan off the truck by a leg.

            His feet hit the ground, knees buckled and he collapsed.

            A boot struck his back, pain radiated from the kick, yet Lorcan lay too wasted to respond.

            A string of Russian curses sounded out. Hands hooked beneath Lorcan’s armpits, yanked him vertical, though he lacked the strength to carry any weight. More Russian grumbles. They dragged him forward. His toes scraped with the rough grind of cement up a dozen steps.

            The surface went smooth beneath his feet, the air warm and smoky. Not like the camp fire, but cigarettes. Lorcan’s skin tingled as if the coldness within battled the temperate air.

            Echoed footsteps returned from a narrow width, but a long distance. A door knob clicked. Metal rubbed metal in a dull squeak for oil. The men turned Lorcan around, tossed him backward into a chair. His head swayed, dizzy with thirst, starvation, hypothermia.

            Someone removed the gag. Air, heavy with stale cigarette smoke, filled Lorcan’s lungs like a fresh spring breeze. Petrol fumes clung to his sinuses, the taste coated his throat, but his first full breath gave a notion of improvement. The blindfold came off. Lorcan squinted against a single harsh incandescent bulb. He closed his eyes, hung his head, unable to escape the lamp’s brutal shine.

            “Who do you work for?” a different man’s voice said in distinctly Russian accented English. “Who do you work for?!” A heavy hand slapped Lorcan across the head.

            “I… I don’t work for anybody,” Lorcan said. “Who do you work for?”

            A slap flung his head to the left.

            “You are in no position to ask questions. Now answer me and you can go home to your little girlfriend.”

            _Clair!_

            Delirious, assaulted by light, by Russians, her name spoke of contentment. To fall into her arms again, to kiss her lips, bury his face in her black hair brought back security. But nobody would snatch him then let him go. They knew too much and he knew nothing. They’d never keep a promise unless he had something to bargain with and the only thing he had, the one thing his continued existence proved, was that his life was worth more than a bullet.

            “Tell me who you work for and I’ll give you water.”

            Death became Lorcan’s ally, the only advantage over his captors.

            “I work… for the KGB. I’m your boss,” Lorcan said.

            Knuckles to skull. Consciousness blinked out.

*23*

            Lorcan woke to a pale green hospital room. Cinderblock walls with no widows, a row of flickering fluorescent lights down the center, empty cots to his left and right. A plastic tube ran into his arm from a bag of clear fluid hung above his head. His hands and feet were tied to the corners of the cot. Lorcan couldn’t move. His head didn’t hurt, he didn’t feel thirst or cold, though hunger persisted and stubborn petrol molecules continued to taint every breath.

            The Russian accented man said, “Mr. Flannigan,” from the end of the hospital room. “Some fluids, some pain killers and you look like a fresh bloomed flower.”

            Thick through the shoulders, dark receded hair slicked straight back with a grin twisted against perpetual frown lines. Nothing about this person’s appearance lent the faintest suggestion he could be trusted.

            Lorcan’s throat too dry for volumes above a whisper, he asked, “Who are you?”

            The man stood over Lorcan, peered straight down. “I am your new best friend. You can call me Yevgeny.”

            “What do you want with me?”

            Yevgeny’s twisted smile broadened. His breath smelled of vodka. Wrinkles squinted across both temples as his eyes tightened.

            “It is simple, my friend. I want to get to know you, or… I want your teeth.”

            Lorcan ran his tongue over the front of his teeth. Images of bloody gums and puckered lips followed. He closed his eyes, inhaled, measured whether he could escape with his face intact. The measurement came up short.

            “Tell me why you invaded sovereign Russian territory.”

            The portraits in the hall, the Baron Cisarovna, his wife, Baroness Anastasia. “I was kidnapped by your agents from, Timis, Romania. Tell me why you snatched me.”

            “Western spies are not tolerated in any part of the world. You are all fair to take whenever you are found. Now tell me, Flannigan, who is the shiny headed man, Destro. Tell me his name and I will release your binds.”

            Released from constraints for a name. Joshy traded a name to the police and betrayed Lorcan’s father, turned in the Cause’s most valuable asset so he could watch football and drink lager until he passed out.

            “I cannot tell you his name, but I can arrange a meeting. Just bring all your money, if you have any.”

            Yevgeny’s grin succumbed to the natural pull of his time-worn frown. He reached back, drew a pair of pliers from his pocket.

            “Exactly the answer I wanted, but you make this too difficult for yourself, Flannigan.”

            Yevgeny gripped Lorcan’s forehead with one hand, leaned on his face.

            Lorcan fought, tried to work against Yevgeny’s strength. Cold steel smashed his lips. He hummed against metal, shook his head, flailed in the straps. Yevgeny wedged the pliers into Lorcan’s mouth, pinched an incisor and wrenched.

            A crack reverberated through Lorcan’s palette, across bone to rattle his eardrums. Blood washed into his throat. Lorcan hacked and coughed and screamed.

            Yevgeny torqued the tooth, yanked and shoved against the bone. The pliers slipped off.

            Lorcan clamped his mouth shut. The tooth wiggled in its socket, held by meaty strands.

            Yevgeny leaned on his head, jammed the pliers into Lorcan’s mouth again, wedged his jaw open and took a better grip on the tooth.

            A scream gurgled through blood. One last twist and pull ripped the tooth out of Lorcan’s face. Yevgeny stood up, held the tooth to his examination like a dentist. “You have very long roots.”

            Lorcan bore down against the agony, probed the gap with his tongue. Loss of control, lies and accusations, torture and the promise of more. Death was no longer Lorcan’s ally. Its guarantee of peace taunted him with the bag of clear liquid, with the chance to heal.

            “Who is Destro?” Yevgeny said and tossed the bloody tooth at Lorcan.

            It struck his brow with a pointed root and clinked against the floor. Lorcan flinched, not from the pain or tissue strings that trailed it, but from the piece of himself torn out and discarded.

            “I don’t know any Destro,” Lorcan hissed, his words thick behind swelling lips.

            “Many people stay brave after the first tooth. I can see you are strong, but you have many teeth and I have lots of time. It is inevitable. And if you last past all your teeth I will take my pliers and remove other things. I have seen you and the shiny headed man together many times. You must know him, so tell me his name and you may keep your teeth.”

            Lorcan panted for air, though every breath drew a mist of blood laced with petrol. Pain and desperation merged into sheer terror. Appeasement seemed reasonable. Lorcan’s father and Brian both knew and used his name without caution. Mr. McCullen, James, never swore Lorcan to any secrecy. But Joshy’s drunken face haunted him. The fate of a rat held Lorcan’s tongue.

            “Why do you protect Destro? He would not do the same for you.”

            Sweat soaked Lorcan’s forehead while a chilly shiver crawled over his flesh. Blood spilled from the corner of his mouth. “I won’t say it because you want it.”

            Yevgeny shook his head. “Now I want another tooth.” He leaned on Lorcan’s head, drove the pliers into his aching mouth and clamped the second incisor.

*24*

            Lorcan buttoned the cuffs around his wrists, straightened his collar. He ran a comb and slicked his black hair straight back. A ray of morning light beamed through the small window set high on his dormitory wall. Shirt tails tucked into his wool trousers, first button open with a thin tuft of chest hair exposed.

            Yevgeny entered from behind. Lorcan spotted him in the mirror, twisted a gnarled grin. Glints of morning light sparkled and Lorcan opened his mouth wider, examined his stainless steel incisors.

            “Now you have fangs of a cobra,” Yevgeny said in Russian with pride.

            Lorcan slid his tongue over the new prosthetic teeth. Where a destitute ex-communist dentist drilled two holes in his upper jaw and hammered sliver posts into the bone, when red hot stainless steel incisors were positioned on the posts, cinched down to their permanent placements and allowed to cool against his gums. The pain of installation became his pride.

            Yevgeny stood beside Lorcan, an arm around the young man’s shoulders and smiled. Not the heinous smile Lorcan had first witnessed, but a genuine show of kind emotion.

            “Lorcan, in these last three years you have grown beyond what I could have hoped. You have the mind of a great general, the skills of a great warrior and the cunning of the greatest spies. You, my friend, can rule the entire world.”

            Lorcan faced Yevgeny, said in flawless Russian, “Anything I have accomplished is because I had the best teacher. Thank you, Yevgeny, for your unyielding hand.”

            Three months spent under the cruelest of torture, three months healing, then onto basic infantry training, paratrooper school, dive school, sniper school, demolition school, spy school and counter intelligence. Lorcan suffered every day at the hands of sadistic conscripts who found his accent an insult to the motherland even though they hated the army. Lorcan bashed scores of draftees, took pummelings from entire gangs and rose above the petty nationalism. He learned faster and fought harder all the while Yevgeny watched, eager to test his student, yet never willing to help.

            “You are too modest, Lorcan. You have become the greatest danger to the world, the one man who can save us all, yet you believe it is me who bestowed such greatness. It was not me. I could not make you what you already were, only help you recognize your limitless potential. Come, it is time you go.”

            Lorcan and Yevgeny both turned for the door as equals. His words three years earlier had come true. While Lorcan sat starving and thirsty, tied up and beaten, Yevgeny proclaimed himself Lorcan’s new best friend. As he exited the tiny dormitory Lorcan felt love for Yevgeny. The one person who he knew and understood. Classmates came and went, most scratched by their lessons under threat of punishment. Army chums wore multiple faces depending on their company, but Yevgeny stayed true. His hatred of Westerners never abated and only when Lorcan lost his accent did Yevgeny treat him with something less than disdain. Yevgeny’s true friendship germinated when Lorcan completed spy school, when the teacher no longer held any deadly advantage over his student. Bigger, stronger, smarter, as Lorcan understood the spy craft philosophy of the KGB, Yevgeny treated him like a comrade instead of a Western pig.

            “Here,” Yevgeny said. “You have earned this.” He drew a thick envelope from his coat pocket and handed it to Lorcan.

            Inside were the credentials of a mid-level, upstanding former communist party member turned agricultural inspector for international affairs, named Ilyich Osip Nijinsky.

            “This will get you across Russia.”

            “Thank you, again. I thought you would hand me one last test.”

            Yevgeny chuckled. “I would if I thought your journey could teach you something more than to kill border guards.”

            Lorcan donned his leather jacket, stuffed the papers in an inside pocket.

            “Your father will be so proud.”

            “I have no reason to boast.”

            They left the dormitory Lorcan had come to identify as his home, walked through the smoky halls, outside and down the steps.

            “Tell me one last thing, Lorcan.”

            Lorcan nodded as he strapped goggles over his eyes.

            “Who is this, Destro?”

            One leg over his motorcycle, Lorcan jumped, kick started the single cylinder engine. He rolled the throttle a few times, smiled at Yevgeny with his steel teeth, let off the clutch and sped away.

*25*

            The Baroness Anastasia Cisarovna met Lorcan as he pulled his motorcycle into the wooden carport of her castle. He analyzed her slinky movements across the walkway, her curves beneath a fitted black business suit, her plunging neck line and stiletto heeled boots. She looked a blend of wicked business with deadly fashion and the ensemble moved him.

            “Mr. Flannigan, I trust your spell at academy has been kind?” the Baroness said in English. She met him beside the motorcycle, snapped her fingers and servants appeared to hurry the hot, dusty machine away.

            “Exceptionally,” Lorcan said in Belfast English with a heavy Russian accent.

            The Baroness smiled. A curious glint caught Lorcan’s eye. His gaze dropped from her eyes to her stainless steel incisors. He hadn’t noticed them before. As if the weight of a mountain drove into his chest, Lorcan realized the kidnapping, the torture, Mr. McCullen’s request for him to retrieve pointless documents had all been arranged. Even the Baroness’s excessive politeness after Mr. McCullen asked about school was a response to the plan they had already made for him.

            A spark of hostility toward Mr. McCullen and the Baroness ignited. But memories of Shannon and the pointless trouble they’d caused came back. He ran his tongue over his new teeth. _No, they knew what I needed most._

            “Come, now the fun begins.” The Baroness locked her elbow around his and led Lorcan into the foyer, along the hall of portraits, past the Baron’s office and into a gilded parlor with high arched ceilings covered in Rococo frescoes of naughty cherubs and scandalous interludes. A black grand piano sat silent along the far wall of the octagonal room. Bright cedar, pine and walnut parquet flooring polished to a ghostly gleam doubled the light from eight foot windows around four sides of the octagon. The crystal chandelier, though switched off, captured and refracted the late morning sunshine into a spangle of rainbows across the back wall.

            “Do you like it?” the Baroness asked.

            Lorcan had wandered Mr. McCullen’s grounds, seen photos of French chateaus, but he’d never occupied a place to rival the pictures or make Castle Destro look like a cave.

            “It’s quaint.” Lorcan’s English sounded forced in the echo. His initial responses came to mind in Russian. He had to think of words from his native tongue, words that once flew without effort.

            The Baroness gave a coy grin. “That is not a description I have heard before.”

            Lorcan swept his gaze back to her. He could tell her that it was the most beautiful place he’d ever seen. He could say she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met, but Lorcan saw no reason to gush to a person who already knew both were true. “So the fun begins here?”

            The Baroness tilted her head, said, “Yes, this is where the fun begins, but it is never where the fun ends.” She sat at the piano, her delicate hands struck the keys. The piano rung with measured, intentional tones though it didn’t sound like a song. Back and forth the sounds resembled chaos, yet the chaos resonated with familiarity. Lorcan heard the chaos before. Darkness and warmth accompanied the music, but the time and place eluded recollection. Both hands played independently as new tones worked against each other, then came together.

            Impressions of claret leather chairs, deep rich rugs, hearth fire. Lorcan watched her smooth, attenuated fingers hover over the keys, hold statue still for a split second. Then both hands, all ten fingers hammered down. A wall of sound hit Lorcan, light flighty chaos drove to hard, powerful rhythms that criss-crossed and joined, then thundered to distant counterpoints. A glitter by firelight, the mask. _Destro!_

The Baroness played on. The warmth and comfort of Mr. McCullen’s study, the concentration on his face as hidden speakers blared the first movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, returned Lorcan to the fateful meeting that led to his last trip to Ireland.

            She played the entire fourteen minute movement splendid and elegant. The last note ended sharp. The Baroness turned to Lorcan, a little out of breath, a contented grin on her porcelain visage.

            “I hope my rendition didn’t offend,” she said. “Do you play an instrument, Mr. Flannigan?”

            Lorcan detected false modesty for a compliment she didn’t need. “No, I play no instruments.”

            “Pity. You really should. Nothing calms the mind like an art.”

            “My art is destruction,” Lorcan said, confident in the new abilities that magnified his old.

            “Yes, and that is why we love you. But, really, what is destruction without creation? The greatest of all ambitions have been in creation. People talk about things destroyed, but they marvel at things created. Take this piece I just played. The deconstructed beginning cannot stand by itself as a wondrous form of art. It leaves the listener jostled, unsettled. But the strong opening notes grab you, force you to listen. The destruction comes first then creation follows. Learn an art and it will teach you the ultimate satisfaction in creation versus the shallow vanity of destruction.”

            “But destruction is what I’m best at.”

            “Yevgeny believes you can rule the world. Spoken like a true communist. They’ve robbed themselves of world culture for so long all they see value in any longer is strength. And strength alone is not creation, but a means to destruction that turns sour and purposeless on its own. You must balance your destructive skills against creation if you’re to become greater than your teacher.”

            “Will you teach me?”

            “Funny boy. I am no teacher, though my husband will introduce you to many folk musicians in the coming days. I’m certain a few will show you something pleasant.”

            “And where will I meet these folk musicians?”

            The Baroness smiled. “In the region know as Bosnia and Herzegovina. I’m afraid a row between political factions has come to violence.”

            Lorcan stepped close to the piano, stared the Baroness in the eye. Her profile glowed in the gentle morning light, though her warm dark glare glossed over the motivations for a war she enabled.

            “It sounds like a lovers’ quarrel. I don’t think anyone would want a foreigner interfering.”

            “True, the Serbians are particular about their racial identity, though I believe they’ll welcome you with handsome rewards. Besides, Yevgeny might have forged you, but your education still requires tempering. What good is theory without application?”

            The Baroness pirouetted from the piano to the center of the parlor, arms held out in a ballerina’s middle fifth, joyful gayety in elegant steps where she finished in a dainty demi-plié. “Please consider this offer tonight at my cotillion. You must come. Very important people I want you to surveil will attend.”

            Her lambent, asking grin seemed to push all excuses aside. Lorcan hesitated in his heart, sharing a jovial palaver with powerful, corrupt people sounded tedious, but he spoke the only words the Baroness would accept. “I will attend.”

            “Fabulous. I’ll have my staff clean and dress you. Wait here and someone will show you to your accommodations.” The Baroness said and fluttered out of the parlor, leaving Lorcan alone and uncomfortable within opulence.

*26*

            Lorcan sat against a bullet pocked block wall in what was once a family’s living room strumming his guitar. He never stayed in the same place two nights in a row, but after a long mission he’d return to his favorite apartment seven stories up a ten story building in an eastern enclave of Kosovo. Evacuated in a hurry, the apartment retained most of its comforts. A plush sofa with only minor damage, soft spring mattresses, a television, though a bullet punctured the screen, prayer mats, a Koran and the guitar. The previous tenants ran for their lives as the Orthodox Serbians bolstered by the Catholic Croatians swept through the city.

            Natural A chord sung.

            The Muslim Bozniaks stood no chance as the Serbs and Croats pushed in from east and north. Help for them arrived late, too late once Lorcan discovered their supply lines.

            A minor rung.

            Its echo brought back memories of his first attack under the code name Firefly. A dozen truck convoy with troops and weapons. Lorcan called in a mortar strike as a mine tore the first truck in half. He caught glimpses of bodies, arms and legs, flying hundreds of yards through the air. Poorly trained soldiers poured from the rest of the trucks, spread out and searched for an ambush when the mortars rained down. Men and boys rushing to defend their kinsmen fell to pieces beneath the coordinated, sustained assault.

            _Should’ve let them fight._

            Lorcan strummed a D minor chord. Last year’s mission resonated. His intelligence pointed to a Croat surge. Allies turned on each other. None of his Serbian associates believed him. Small, out of sight alleys, probable sniper positions, flanking paths past the main bridge into Sarajevo. He prepared the battle field alone and by the time anyone understood the surge was real, a quarter of the Croat forces were dead, another quarter too frightened to move and the rest bottle-necked at the bridge. Lorcan’s Serb associates had a field day. They decimated the Croat surge and instead of thanking their foreign friend they took to raping every woman and girl in their path.

            _Catholics._

            The E minor matched his mood as he recalled Serb forces betraying and defiling his fellow Catholics.

            Baroness Anastasia Cisarovna’s spring cotillion. Servants tailored a tuxedo for Lorcan, polished his patent black leather shoes, shaved his face, cut and styled his hair. They clipped his nails and scraped the calluses, but no amount of work could hide his proletarian background in time for the party. Told to speak only Russian, Lorcan mingled with aristocrats, statesmen and generals as Illyich Osip Nijinsky. Women danced in long evening gowns fresh from Paris. Men donned their business custom, single breasted coats with a fringe of shirt-cuff showing around the wrist for the stylish wealthy, buttoned down ten-year old tuxedos for the statesmen and drab green uniforms adorned in bright medals outlined with colorful ribbon for the generals.

            The chatter on everyone’s lips was the conflict in Bosnia. Lorcan took names and listened to the formulaic conversations profess regret, sympathy for the innocent, and suggested ways to end the conflict which inevitably turned to aiding and arming the Serbians in a convoluted line of logic that portrayed them as the righteous victims. And in each case the guest would gain regional influence, power and profit from a Serbian victory. The Baroness’s cotillion consolidated financial and political support. She brokered the war and sent Firefly in as insurance.

            Down to G.

            _Clair._

            The creamy white crook where her long neck met her clavicle. Lorcan dreamed to kiss that small part, to make her giggle and sigh. He waited for her. Five brutal years since they’d made love. Three spent with Yevgeny, the rest spent in Bosnia. Death’s foul wind blew into every corner of the city. Human beings, reduced to rotting heaps, littered the streets. Vanilla with a hint of sweat fought off the ubiquitous stench, though only as an abstract memory. Her skin glowed with health, yet around him, dirty men, scared women and sickly children abounded. Her strength to be equal while employed as a servant sang of honor and dignity against a world dominated by twisted allegiances and empty pride built on destruction. The heat between them, her smooth flesh, her simple trust.

            Transition to C.

            _I’ve got to get home._

            Colonel Milich took Firefly on a tour of his prison camp, told his foreign associate that for his exemplary effort he could choose any and all females he wanted. Lorcan walked the rape camp with his gray balaclava pulled over his face. Not to hide his identity, but to hide his shame. Hundreds of women and girls, some cuddled together like family, shook as he passed. One girl caught his eye. Creamy white skin, black hair. She looked like Clair. One night with a person that resembled his love might ease his longing. When the girl sensed Lorcan’s stare she faced him straight on. One eye on her beautiful face was swollen and purple. He turned and ran from the camp.

            Six strings rung together in E minor.

            Firefly had killed hundreds of people in the last two years, all of them soldiers come to battle against his side, but his side ravaged the weak and innocent. They took pleasure in purposeless cruelty.

            Disgusted by the Serbians, guilty for helping monsters, Lorcan slit Colonel Milich’s throat, executed his guards and set the prison camp free.

            _None of these bastards deserve to live._

            E minor

*27*

            A reinforced Croatian unit sat poised to launch their attack. Two hundred men coming in from the north backed by artillery. A few trucks, some close support mortars, nothing Firefly couldn’t handle alone, but the Serbians had already prepared and moved a unit of M-84 tanks with a thousand infantry into position plus helicopter gunships. They’d slaughter the Croats and sweep through the countryside unopposed, collecting women, killing children.

            Night fall, both sides prepared for combat. Both sides prepared for victory. Firefly prepared the urban battlefield. He sabotaged tanks and helicopters, set antipersonnel traps, planted fake intelligence evidence on one side, genuine intelligence evidence on the other. He crept to Serbian sniper posts in apartment buildings and on roof tops and killed them all.

            Sunshine crested the distant Carpathian Mountains. Firefly ducked away to let the equalized battle play out. Gun fire and explosions echoed across the northern part of Serbia as Lorcan retreated to his favorite apartment, picked up his guitar and strummed a few chords. The new day brought death and destruction, but it wouldn’t bring an unstoppable army down on innocent Croatians.

            Lorcan laid on the bed, pulled the blanket up to his neck and drifted off to a sound, guilt free sleep.

*28*

            From a fifth story apartment complex window on the western side overlooking Sarajevo, Lorcan set the cross hairs on a Serbian soldier with his pants around his ankles and a young girl trapped. _Deep breath in, hold, squeeze the trigger between heart beats._

            He took one last look to confirm the kill. _Caught with your pants down._

            The girl ran off.

            More soldiers, both Serbian and Croatian battled. Lorcan picked off men of either stripe. Artillery pounded the city, mortars lobbed back and forth, helicopters and tanks roamed free. Rocket propelled grenades would stream skyward, detonate and send gunships swirling to their destruction. Explosions, machine guns, tank tracks rumbled all around him, but Lorcan stood his ground, fought for the side that employed him and the side he sympathized with by thinning the ranks of both.

            “Firefly.”

            Lorcan spun from his sniper scope, drew his Heckler and Koch nine millimeter between the Baroness’s eyes as she walked into his hideout. Without a blink she strolled to Lorcan. Her tight black pants tucked into sturdy boots, black long sleeved blouse contoured to her stomach and breasts caught him off guard.

            She smiled and said, “Your skills preclude you from open combat. This is a game for the youngest and dumbest.” She picked up Lorcan’s rifle, swung the barrel and fired. The Baroness cycled another bullet, found a target, fired again.

            “You see? That second person just watched his friend’s head burst, yet he jumped behind the same wall for cover. This is beneath you.”

            “How did you find me? And how did you get past my perimeter?” Lorcan asked, shaken that someone had reached him.

            “You’ve spent too much time among the youngest and dumbest. Your counter measures are set for common soldiers, not for students of Yevgeny.” She smiled, her metal teeth glittered.

            An artillery shell exploded. The building quaked.

            “Here,” the Baroness said and handed Lorcan a device the size of his palm. “Call Destro. He’s been missing you. Press the green button.” She focused again through the scope, fired, cycled, fired.

            Lorcan pressed the green button, held the device to his ear. A normal telephone ring tone buzzed, then stopped. The Baroness fired again.

            “Hello, Lorcan Farris.”

            Lorcan shuddered to hear his real name again. Nobody knew it, he hadn’t heard it in five years, the shock of a distant memory mentioned over an electronic device sent a chill through his marrow. A real name equaled a liability.

            “Don’t worry, this line is secure. I want you to come back to Callander. The U.N. has authorized air strikes against the Serbians.”

            “But I can finish this,” Lorcan said.

            Another shot fired. The Baroness reloaded the rifle, shot again.

            “Perhaps, but this is not your war and now the U.N. has gotten involved. That will only complicate your egress. Besides, more pressing issues await you here.”

            The line went dead.

            The Baroness took another shot and said, “Well this has been fun. Shall we depart?”

            “You’re abandoning the Serbs as well?”

            She cracked an impertinent grin. “Me? Yes. My husband? No. Marius still believes in the cause. He was once a lieutenant in the Romanian army. A common soldier turned general all because he was born to the right parents. Not a pragmatic man, but I do love him so. Now let’s go.”

            “A moment to grab my things,” Lorcan said.

            “You won’t need any of it.” The Baroness held up an incendiary grenade, pulled the safety pin and tossed it beside Lorcan’s rifle.

            “Shite!” Lorcan jumped out of the room behind the Baroness. A steady hiss and magenta flame followed. The grenade ignited the carpet, drapes and wood furnishings, cooked off ammunition, detonated explosives and set the apartment ablaze.

            “You’re crazy lady.”

            “Lighten up and have some fun once in a while. Now I want to get out of this hideous country.”

            “I have to stop by my hideout. There’s one thing I have to pick up before we leave.”

*29*

            Lorcan poked a log and stoked the fire. The warm scent of burning pine filled the dim study. Glints and sparkles from the polished mask displayed on a pedestal caught his eye. Lorcan felt a smile pull, knew his steel incisors sparkled in the fire light like the mask. The stained oak walls, the tapestry carpets, the volumes of books fit into every dream he’d had since visiting Yevgeny. Nothing had changed in five years, but then nothing had changed in three and a half centuries, either.

            He poured a snifter of brandy from the crystal decanter on the buffet, sat back in the claret leather high backed chair, the brass buttons pulling gaps in the cushions beneath him. Lorcan sipped, rolled the spirit over his tongue, its sweetness, its richness countered the rancid meat, putrid gruel and rotten vegetables that had been his staple for five long years. Lorcan sipped again, set the snifter on a small circular side table and picked up his guitar. A soft melody strummed, met the burning log’s fiery crackle amid the ageless silence in the study of Castle Destro.

            The door knob scraped open, a moment’s pause then cricked shut. Lorcan heard it, yet continued to play until the progression resolved into a simple tune that rung out with time.

            Mr. McCullen asked with a smile in his voice, “Lorcan Farris, or do you prefer your nom de guerre?”

            Lorcan beamed at his old patron, stood to greet him. “You’ve known me too long for formality,” he said and stepped into a hearty hand shake and burly hug. They broke the embrace, admiration in each other’s eyes.

            “Tell me, Lorcan, how you managed to evade my security systems, all my very well paid guards and light a fire in my study undetected?”

            Lorcan’s smile broadened. “Prior knowledge and a good teacher make the impossible seem simple.”

            “Troubling. Well, tomorrow why don’t we work to improve on the impossible?”

            “But then I’ll have to carry a key.”

            Both laughed together by the fire. Lorcan poured a snifter for Mr. McCullen and the two men toasted.

            “To a successful future.”

            “Cheers!”

            “I see you’ve graduated Yevgeny’s academy with honors,” Mr. McCullen said. “The Baroness Anastasia informs me that he was most impressed, that you were the first student he couldn’t break.”

            “It was easy.”

            “In that case our friend in Belfast, Brian, has supplied details to your father’s incarceration. Perhaps you’d enjoy freeing him from prison?”

            All the dreams Lorcan ever had of stepping forward, showing his father what he’d become and thanking him for his childhood evanesced. Not the drunken beatings, but Pearce’s pride from devastation, from innocent women and children killed and wounded, revealed his weakness, proved him nothing more than a petty egotist. His father deserved prison. A miserable place to house a selfish person.

            “While the exercise sounds fun, I’m sure there are more pressing issues at hand,” Lorcan said.

            Mr. McCullen nodded understanding. “In that case, much has happened since you left and I believe you’ve arrived just in time to correct the situation.”

            “I’ll help where I can.”

            Mr. McCullen sipped again, poured another round into both their snifters.

            “Someone is collecting information on me. None of my agents have been able to track the spy. What evidence there is suggests he or she works for the United States, though my sources cannot confirm it. This comes at a bad time. A situation is developing in a breakaway republic of Russia called Chechnya. Both sides need a little encouragement and I wanted you to help them feel like victims. However, I cannot provide my services to the region while under surveillance.”

            “When should this encouragement take place?”

            “Over the winter so both sides can prepare for spring offensives. Baroness Anastasia is hosting another cotillion to consolidate support and her constituents would like to see progress sooner rather than later.”

            Mr. McCullen poured a third round of brandy. Lorcan’s fourth.

            “What information do you have on this spy?” Lorcan asked and swirled the brandy before he sipped.

            “The spy has acquired financial information. Most requests are coming from London, then transferred to an office in New York. Not much has been revealed, but I cannot take chances and I won’t move on Chechnya until this spy has been eliminated.”

            “I’ll take care of it.”

            “The spy’s code name is Quarrel. Do what you must, Firefly.”

*30*

            Not drunk, but enough of a sway entered Lorcan’s steps to make the trip from the study to his bedroom a tiny adventure. Exotic Persian rugs tipped left and right, the dark oak wainscoting held stable, yet bent up and down along the hall. How the décor amazed him when he’d first arrived, but he’d gotten used to the intricate detail across every surface as day to day familiarity set in.

            And then it was all gone.

            Bare prison cells, cold and cruel. Rats, cockroaches, human filth. Interrogations. Endless beatings.

            The rugs compressed under foot, the air smelled old, exactly as it did the first day Lorcan arrived. Safety and security resided within the castle, peace within the halls.

            Lorcan fumbled his guitar from one hand to the other, grasped the brass doorknob and entered his old room. He flicked on the lights. Window sills, desk, king sized bed with clean linens and comforter. His wardrobe full of clothes, most of which he’d outgrown.

            He tossed his black leather jacket and guitar on the bed, followed the sway and crashed to his back beside both. The springs absorbed his weight, cradled bones that had ached too long for the comfort. Satisfaction of long held desires settled Lorcan’s ancient visions of Heaven into simple contentment.

            Contentment minus one.

            Clair shared his bed the last night he’d spent in it. She filled the extra space, made him feel wanted and whole, as though her presence completed his humanity. The dreams he’d carried, the memories of her figure, scent of her skin, her hair, her breath. Every word they’d said to each other and the innocuous meanings behind them played across his mind a billion times. She stood out as his beacon of hope, a person to fight through the hardships for.

            Lorcan breathed deep. Those long years spent away, he couldn’t last one more night.

            _But she’s probably asleep,_ he thought. _I don’t care. I’ll find her after a quick nap._

            The stresses of Yevgeny’s school and war melted into the soft pillows. Clair, his love, waited for him someplace in the castle, but he needed to rest. Ideas and strategies of how to find her wore into abstract, dream-skewed images where he met her in bed and swam into deep embraces and passionate kisses. The dreams felt real, they felt better than real.

            Knock at the door.

            Instincts, animalistic and instant. From sleep Lorcan snatched his jacket, palmed his gun and aimed it through the leather at the door.

            Clair appeared.

            “Sorry, I saw the light on and… Lorcan?”

            Lorcan set his gun and jacket aside.

            “Clair.” He leapt off his bed, rushed three strides, took his love in his arms. She fit, right where she belonged, next to his heart.

            “I’ve waited so long for you,” Clair said.

            Lorcan leaned down, caught the tears in her eyes and pressed his trembling lips to hers.

 

 

_Thank you for reading_ Code Name: Firefly _. Watch for the next segment of the series due next month on May 23, 2015 entitled,_ Command Decision _. Enjoy and tell a friend._


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